Results 1 to 6 of 6
Like Tree1Likes

Thread: FBI's Comey: Mexican drug cartels fueling US heroin epidemic

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

  1. #1
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2005
    Location
    Heart of Dixie
    Posts
    36,012

    FBI's Comey: Mexican drug cartels fueling US heroin epidemic

    FBI's Comey: Mexican drug cartels fueling US heroin epidemic

    By Matthew Dean
    Published March 02, 2017
    FoxNews.com


    GLEN ALLEN, Va. – Mexican drug cartels are fueling the heroin epidemic that is sweeping the United States, according to the director of the FBI.

    Addressing an audience of local residents and public safety officials at an opioid summit in suburban Virginia on Wednesday, James Comey said cartels are continuing to saturate the country with waves of “highly, highly pure” heroin.

    The FBI chief, speaking alongside Drug Enforcement Administration acting administrator Chuck Rosenberg, painted the picture of a nationwide drug crisis that’s penetrating communities of all shapes and sizes. Fighting it requires a complex strategy that involves not only traditional law enforcement but also market economics.
    “We cannot arrest our way out of this problem,” Comey said.

    Mexican cartels have cornered the heroin market in the United States with an increasingly potent product and they are selling it cheaply in order to seize demand, according to Comey. He told the audience that in some instances, traffickers have even sold their heroin at a loss in order to gain market share.

    In an effort to cut overhead costs and increase profits, law enforcement officials say that the cartels are relying less on trafficking heroin from South America and are instead ramping up production inside Mexico.

    The latest data from the DEA show dramatic increases in Mexican opium poppy cultivation.

    Production grew 160 percent from 2013 to 2014, according to DEA estimates. And that trend continued from 2014 to 2015 with a 64 percent increase in opium poppy cultivation in Mexico.

    “Drug trafficking is a business and when you reduce costs of transportation, you're able to lower the price and increase the purity," Comey said.

    But at the heart of the matter, according to the leaders of the FBI and DEA, is the widespread abuse of prescription painkillers, like oxycodone, which can serve as a gateway to heroin use.

    Rosenberg noted that four out of five heroin users start with prescription pills.

    "Sometimes we use words like 'epidemic' or 'unprecedented' or 'historic' in ways that are not really accurate," Rosenberg said. "This is unprecedented. This is an epidemic."
    Data show that Rosenberg’s statement is not hyperbole.

    According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, prescription and illicit opioids – like heroin – accounted for 33,091 overdose deaths in 2015. That figure, which is part of the most recent U.S. overdose data available from the CDC, marks a quadrupling from 1999.

    Presenting at the opioid summit on Wednesday, one local district health official said that preliminary 2016 data for the Commonwealth of Virginia show a 33 percent spike in opioid-related overdose deaths compared to 2015.

    A contributing factor behind the overall spike in opioid-related overdose deaths, according to Rosenberg, is the prevalence of fentanyl. The synthetic opioid, which is up to 100 times more potent than morphine and up to 50 times more powerful than heroin, has exploded in popularity in the last several years, prompting the head of the DEA to call it “a game changer.”

    See Interactive at link:

    That spike in popularity can be attributed to its high potency combined with its low cost, relative to pure heroin and prescription opiates.

    The agency’s forensic laboratory system recorded a staggering 1,392 percent increase in fentanyl encounters from 2013 to 2015. And law enforcement officials are warning that drug traffickers are lacing heroin and knockoff prescription painkillers with the deadly synthetic, unbeknownst to the consumer.

    Rosenberg said that the issue is causing law enforcement agencies to rethink protocols on handling illicit substances that may be or may contain fentanyl. If it were to come into contact with the skin, a concentrated dose of fentanyl, or one of its derivatives, could be fatal.

    To first stave off the heroin epidemic, Comey and Rosenberg said that the FBI and DEA’s enforcement strategy ultimately seeks to crush the international cartels and, in doing so, drive up the cost of illegal drugs for consumers.

    “Our job is to try to crack down on the supply, literally, to be very blunt, to drive up the price to make it less and less attractive for people who are addicted to pills to move to heroin,” Comey said.

    http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/03/02...-epidemic.html

    Support our FIGHT AGAINST illegal immigration & Amnesty by joining our E-mail Alerts at https://eepurl.com/cktGTn

  2. #2
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Posts
    55,883
    To first stave off the heroin epidemic, Comey and Rosenberg said that the FBI and DEA’s enforcement strategy ultimately seeks to crush the international cartels and, in doing so, drive up the cost of illegal drugs for consumers.

    “Our job is to try to crack down on the supply, literally, to be very blunt, to drive up the price to make it less and less attractive for people who are addicted to pills to move to heroin,” Comey said.
    No, you Gigantic Ass Holes, YOUR JOB is to hunt down to the ends of the earth the people doing this and put them behind bars, NOT INCREASE THEIR PROFITS.

    Our FBI and DEA are corrupt. No one could be as stupid as what they said above would otherwise indicate. That means, they're are on the take with the cartels, plain and simple. This requires an immediate independent investigation of the FBI and DEA and their role in promoting the sale and increased profits of criminals selling killer narcotics.

    Trump needs to require the immediate resignation of Jim Comey and Chuck Rosenberg. NOW.
    A Nation Without Borders Is Not A Nation - Ronald Reagan
    Save America, Deport Congress! - Judy

    Support our FIGHT AGAINST illegal immigration & Amnesty by joining our E-mail Alerts at https://eepurl.com/cktGTn

  3. #3
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2005
    Location
    Heart of Dixie
    Posts
    36,012
    Colorado.
    Pueblo County sees most heroin overdoses in Colorado in 2016


    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    PUBLISHED: February 22, 2017 at 1:39 pm | UPDATED: February 22, 2017 at 1:45 pm


    PUEBLO — Pueblo County has the highest rate of fatal heroin overdoses in Colorado.

    The Pueblo Chieftain reports that Dr. Michael Nerenberg told the Pueblo City Council at its work session Tuesday that the county had 12 heroin overdoses in each 2015 and 2016. The county also had the highest rate of drug-related overdoses with 38 deaths in 2016 including heroin deaths.

    Nerenberg oversees the Point Access Pueblo needle-exchange program. He says his program serves about 360 people a month. He says needle-exchange programs are the first step in getting people into treatment.

    He said the council and other elected officials should encourage law enforcement to help, not arrest, addicts.

    http://www.denverpost.com/2017/02/22...verdoses-2016/

    Support our FIGHT AGAINST illegal immigration & Amnesty by joining our E-mail Alerts at https://eepurl.com/cktGTn

  4. #4
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2005
    Location
    Heart of Dixie
    Posts
    36,012
    Colorado’s opioid and heroin overdose deaths outnumbered homicides in 2015

    Opiate deaths are catching up to alcohol-related liver disease deaths


    By JOHN INGOLD | jingold@denverpost.com | The Denver Post
    PUBLISHED: January 3, 2017 at 11:15 am | UPDATED: January 3, 2017 at 11:18 pm


    Overdose deaths from just one kind of opioid painkiller outnumbered all homicides in Colorado in 2015, according to new data from the state’s Health Department.

    In 2015, 259 people died from overdoses of what health officials call “natural” prescription opioids — drugs like hydrocodone and oxycodone. That compares with 205 people who died from homicide.
    That was not the first time natural opioid overdose deaths have topped homicides; in fact, the pattern has occurred in the state every year since 2011.




    But it shows how the opioid overdose epidemic — while not as bad in Colorado as in other parts of the country — is remaking the measures of death in the state and beginning to rival what are often believed to be more common ways to die.

    In 2015, 329 people died in Colorado from an overdose of some kind of prescription opioid, either a natural opioid, a synthetic one such as fentanyl, or methadone. Adding in the people who died from overdoses of heroin brings the total number of opiate-related deaths in Colorado in 2015 to 472, according to the state Department of Public Health and Environment. (The sum of deaths from each type of opiate add up to more than the total number of deaths because, in some cases, multiple drugs were present in a single overdose. Data from 2016 is not yet available.)



    That number is still way below the state’s leading killers: cancer and heart disease. In 2015, more than 36,000 people died in Colorado — meaning opiates accounted for only about 1.3 percent of all deaths.




    But they are beginning to approach causes of death that were once much, much more common than overdose. Take, for instance, the trends in death rates for opiate overdoses versus those for diabetes.



    Or how opiate overdoses came to dominate deaths from drug poisoning in Colorado, even though they had once been rivaled by cocaine.




    If these trends continue, opiate deaths will soon surpass deaths from several prominent causes.

    While alcohol-related liver disease deaths have also been rising, opiates are catching up.




    At the start of 2015, opiate overdoses appeared poised to outnumber motor vehicle deaths for the first time in the state’s history. A leveling off of opiate deaths combined with a sudden uptick in car-crash deaths prevented that from happening.




    Deaths from opiates could even surpass deaths from firearms in Colorado if this trend goes on for several more years. (Most firearms deaths in Colorado are suicides, and opiate deaths in 2015 were about 13 percent below firearm suicide deaths.)




    Because of the imprecise way deaths are sometimes documented, the number of opiate overdoses in Colorado in 2015 may have been even higher than CDPHE reported.


    When a doctor or a coroner lists a death as being due, generically, to just an “opioid,” health researchers tally it in a category of deaths from “other and unspecified narcotics.” Some researchers include deaths in that category in their totals of opiate-related deaths, which likely make up the majority of the category. But, because the category may also include deaths from non-opiate drugs, CDPHE does not count them in order to avoid a possible overcount.

    For 2015, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed 35 deaths in Colorado in the “other and unspecified” category, though the CDC’s numbers on deaths often differ slightly from CDPHE’s.

    Opiate deaths aren’t distributed equally across the state, as CDPHE reported in a November paper. Pueblo County has been particularly hard hit, and southeastern Colorado overall has struggled especially with heroin overdoses.

    But the state has begun to tackle these deaths in large-scale ways. CDPHE has expanded access to naloxone, an opiate overdose-reversing drug, and also increased the number of places where people can dispose of unused pain medication. The governor’s office and the legislature have created a number of task forces to study the issue and propose solutions.

    Still, officials know the problem won’t be quickly solved.

    “It’s not going to come easily,” Rob Valuck, the director for one of those new task forces, the Colorado Consortium for Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention, said at a meeting in November, “with how complex it is.”
    http://www.denverpost.com/2017/01/03...red-homicides/

    Support our FIGHT AGAINST illegal immigration & Amnesty by joining our E-mail Alerts at https://eepurl.com/cktGTn

  5. #5
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Posts
    7,377
    Anything Comey says is going to be laughable. I mean he couldn't find that Hillary intentionally did anything wrong.

    Now their idea is to drive the price of heroin up so the druggies can't buy it. I don't really know much about drug users, but I'm think maybe that would simply force them to do more crimes to get what they want - wouldn't it?

    Also, if they drive the price up, the big guys way up at the top of the food chain are going to be making bigger profit as well.

    Could it be the DEA is actually going to 'crush' the competition for the big guys, so they can make those profits.

  6. #6
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Posts
    55,883
    Quote Originally Posted by nntrixie View Post
    Anything Comey says is going to be laughable. I mean he couldn't find that Hillary intentionally did anything wrong.

    Now their idea is to drive the price of heroin up so the druggies can't buy it. I don't really know much about drug users, but I'm think maybe that would simply force them to do more crimes to get what they want - wouldn't it?

    Also, if they drive the price up, the big guys way up at the top of the food chain are going to be making bigger profit as well.

    Could it be the DEA is actually going to 'crush' the competition for the big guys, so they can make those profits.
    This is just all part of our PERIOD OF IRONIES AND OPPOSITES!!

    It hurts the poor addicts who have to pay more and makes the drug cartels wealthier than they even dreamed. This is not a policy to end the sale of these killer narcotics, this is a policy to enrich the drug cartels so thee's more money to line Comey and Rosenberg's pockets.
    A Nation Without Borders Is Not A Nation - Ronald Reagan
    Save America, Deport Congress! - Judy

    Support our FIGHT AGAINST illegal immigration & Amnesty by joining our E-mail Alerts at https://eepurl.com/cktGTn

Similar Threads

  1. Mexican cartels are expanding their control over the US heroin market
    By Newmexican in forum illegal immigration News Stories & Reports
    Replies: 8
    Last Post: 04-11-2017, 10:42 AM
  2. JW Reveals Shocking Details About Mexican Heroin Cartels
    By lorrie in forum illegal immigration News Stories & Reports
    Replies: 4
    Last Post: 12-17-2016, 03:18 PM
  3. Pain pills, illegal immigration fueling drug epidemic in Hamblen County
    By HAPPY2BME in forum illegal immigration News Stories & Reports
    Replies: 2
    Last Post: 02-17-2012, 10:58 AM
  4. Heroin Epidemic Leads to Largest DEA Operation Against Drug
    By JohnDoe2 in forum Other Topics News and Issues
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 09-28-2011, 04:36 PM

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •