What's New
The DEA Administrator who has overseen the response to the United States' fentanyl crisis told Newsweek Wednesday that targeting the entire supply chain — from China to Mexican cartels to criminal networks in the U.S. — is the reason overdose deaths have been falling precipitously.
Anne Milgram, who was appointed to the office by President Joe Biden in 2021, spoke after the Drug Enforcement Administration announced that in 2023, 69 percent of all overdose deaths were linked to the lethal synthetic opioid.
Why It Matters
Fentanyl was responsible for around 200 American deaths a day last year. The drug's cartel origins has been a focus for the federal government, which has had to work to unpick a complex, global network – including pill pressers, transporters, and money launderers — in an attempt to cut off the flow into the U.S.
Milgram's interview with Newsweek comes at the end of her tenure leading the agency. President-elect Trump's choice to replace her withdrew his candidacy, and another appointee is yet to be announced.
"President-Elect Trump has made brilliant decisions on who will serve in his second Administration at lightning pace. Remaining decisions will continue to be announced by him when they are made," Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Newsweek.
What To Know
Under Milgram's leadership, the DEA expanded its Operation OD Justice, set up originally in 2021 in California to thoroughly investigate overdose deaths and trace the source of the drug. Since then, over 500 drug poisonings and overdose-related death investigations have taken place.
"Some of those, we have been able to directly link back to Jalisco in Mexico, and others to part of the criminal networks that we're targeting," Milgram told Newsweek, referring to one of the two major cartels linked to fentanyl distribution. The other is Sinaloa.
"In the last three years we have arrested four of the seven leaders of Sinaloa, so we're also having an impact on the leadership and the infrastructure in Mexico," Milgram added.
While fentanyl deaths were already rising when the former New Jersey attorney general took over the DEA, at around 56,000 in 2020, they surpassed 70,000 in the first two years of the Biden administration. Milgram told Newsweek that between July 2023 and July 2024, there were 19,173 fewer American deaths linked to the drug. The CDC has said that year-long period saw a 15 percent decrease in overdose deaths.
Fentanyl's ability to deliver a lethal dose, while concealed within other pills or powders, has made it one of the biggest illegal drug problems the U.S. has ever known, killing a quarter million Americans since 2018. Milgram said that seeking out the opioid's source was key to bringing fatalities down.
"We have now identified that these two networks, Sinaloa and Jalisco, are operating 65 countries around the world," she said. "Fentanyl remains a primarily North American problem within Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, but we have seen fentanyl seizures in other parts of the world. We've also seen the two cartels exporting methamphetamine in multiple countries."
The cartels are not the DEA's only targets, with China's role in precursor chemical production – the components used to make fentanyl – another vexing problem. Milgram said U.S. authorities had charged at least 20 Chinese companies and 20 Chinese nationals over their alleged roles in the drug's production. Diplomatic efforts have also led to the Chinese government take action on chemical production.
Drug traffickers are using cryptocurrency to launder the money associated with the fentanyl trade, which the DEA is now on to in its effort to map and target the entire criminal network.
"We have increased our capacity to trace the crypto and track the crypto globally, and we, again, have an entire counter-threat team, and those teams are agents, analysts, data scientists, targeters, chemical experts, money laundering experts," Milgram explained.
What People Are Saying
Democratic Massachusetts Representative Jake Auchincloss, who introduced legislation targeting China's role in the crisis, said in a press release Tuesday: "Dismantling the fentanyl supply chain starts at the source. The CCP Fentanyl Sanctions Act sanctions Chinese chemical manufacturers that are profiting by poisoning the American people."
Republican Washington Rep. Dan Newhouse, in a press release on the same effort: "As we continue our work fighting the immediate threat the drug poses, we are also going after the [Chinese Communist Party] and their central role in subsidizing, producing, and exporting the precursors that fuel this epidemic."
Democratic Kansas Representative Sharice Davids, on X: "Overdose deaths are continuing to decrease across the country — an encouraging sign that efforts to end the Fentanyl crisis are making our communities safer. More work is needed, but this is good news."
Illinois State Police, on X Sunday: "Fentanyl is the single deadliest drug threat to our nation. Fentanyl is everywhere. From large metropolitan areas to rural America, no community is safe from this poison. We must continue to spread the word to prevent fentanyl-related overdose death and poisonings from claiming numerous lives daily."
What's Next
While the next DEA Administrator nominee is yet to be announced after Trump's initial pick of Florida sheriff Chad Chronister withdrew from the running, Milgram appeared focused on continuing her work.
"We will continue to go deeper. Deeper into the spaces where we are seeing patterns and connections that we have never seen before, and being able to see it lets us action it, and that has an incredible impact, ultimately, on our ability to defeat the cartels and stop the harm," she said.
English (US) ·