WASHINGTON (AP) — A key participant within the U.S. authorities’s battle to fight the flow of deadly fentanyl is a crew at a little-known analysis lab in northern Virginia that is working to research seized narcotics and collect intelligence to search out methods to cease the provision.
Lawyer Common Pam Bondi traveled to the Drug Enforcement Administration lab on Tuesday to fulfill with chemists who’re tasked with figuring out the ever-evolving techniques employed by cartels to fabricate medicine flowing throughout the southern border.
“We try to reverse engineer what the cartels are doing at any given time,” senior DEA analysis chemist David Guthrie informed Bondi. “Each time one thing new reveals up, it is our job to determine how that obtained in there. Did they modify the recipe? Are they utilizing a brand new compound?”
Bondi donned a blue DEA lab coat as she toured the power in an effort to place a highlight on a key Trump administration precedence to fight the illicit move of fentanyl that is blamed for tens of thousands of overdose deaths yearly.
The chemists confirmed Bondi the convenience with which cartels are in a position to produce fentanyl, and detailed how their crew is working to determine new compounds to assist legislation enforcement maintain illicit medicine off the road.
“That is how straightforward it’s to kill Individuals,” Bondi mentioned after watching blue tablets shoot out of a tablet press seized by investigators that is able to producing 15,000 tablets an hour.
The Trump administration has sought to extend strain on violent drug cartels and felony gangs, charging an alleged high-ranking member of Tren de Aragua in Colombia with terrorism offenses earlier this month.
The White Home has linked the fentanyl problem to his tariffs, saying the president is working to carry Mexico, Canada, and China “accountable to their guarantees of halting unlawful immigration and stopping toxic fentanyl and different medicine from flowing into our nation.”
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