Staggering amounts of fentanyl hit streets as the DEA watched and took no action, records show

[Nevilledog]

https://apnews.com/article/dea-fentanyl-unseized-drugs-new-mexico-8f5b546e668e5007c64078da74b90903

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Even as it battled the deadliest drug epidemic in American history, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration permitted hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to hit the streets of New Mexico between 2023 and 2025, according to three current and former DEA agents and government records reviewed by The Associated Press.

DEA agents repeatedly monitored shipments of fentanyl pills — but did not seize them — as federal prosecutors sought to bring bigger criminal cases against traffickers of a synthetic opioid that the White House last year designated a “ weapon of mass destruction.”

Agents and experts, however, said the tactic amounted to a gamble with public safety that potentially imperiled communities in and around Albuquerque and may have violated U.S. Justice Department rules intended to safeguard the public.

“We poisoned our community to make cases,” DEA Special Agent David Howell told AP in a series of interviews in New Mexico. “Through our own willful blindness, we get to say, ‘We don’t really know what happened to the drugs.’ But we 100% got people killed.”

*snip*

[MineralMan]

1. Worse, it could be deliberate.

If you look at the stats of who dies from fentanyl overdoses, you'll understand what I'm saying.

Seriously.

[many a good man]

4. This was under Biden and ended under Trump

Lack of resources forced them to focus on the bigger fish.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

2. protecting and serving

[progressoid]

3. I thought Trump was gonna stop this by gettin rid of all them brown people that smuggled it accross the border?

That's what I heard on FoX newz.