“The US and its allies have warned for years that Iran is developing pharmaceutical-based weapons in breach of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans the manufacture and use of “toxic chemicals,” defined as “chemical action on life processes [that] can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals.” Treaty signatories — including Iran — are obligated to destroy existing stockpiles.
Still, evidence suggests Iran is pursuing PBAs. “In 2014, Iran’s Chemistry Department of IHU [Imam Hossein University] sought kilogram quantities of medetomidine — a [veterinary] sedative it has researched as an aerosolized incapacitant — from Chinese exporters, according to a 2023 US State Department’s report. “The Chemistry Department has little history of veterinary or even medical research, and the quantities sought (over 10,000 effective doses) were inconsistent with the reported end use of research.”
In September 2023, Iranian anti-government hackers “posted confidential documents detailing an Iranian military university’s development of grenades meant to disseminate medetomidine,” the State Department said.
Of particular concern were references in Iranian literature to the 2002 Dubrovka incident, when Russian security forces pumped pharmaceutical-based gas — probably fentanyl or carfentanyl, another synthetic opioid vastly more potent — into a crowded Moscow theater to subdue Chechen rebels who had taken almost a thousand hostages. Commandos then stormed the building and killed the incapacitated rebels — but the gas also killed more than 130 hostages.”
“the vast majority of fentanyl brought into the U.S. is not carried by illegal immigrants or the result of porous borders: From 2019 to 2024, 80.2 percent of the people arrested at the border with fentanyl were U.S. citizens, according to David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute.
And as NPR reported last year, “the vast majority of illicit fentanyl—close to 90%—is seized at official border crossings.””
“Those laws create a black market in which the composition and potency of drugs is uncertain and highly variable. They also push traffickers toward highly potent drugs such as fentanyl, which are easier to conceal and smuggle. As a result, drug users like Gentili typically don’t know exactly what they are consuming, which magnifies the risk of a fatal mistake. The “poisoning” that Peace and Caban decried therefore is a consequence of the policies they were proudly enforcing in this very case.”
“Vance is perhaps the GOP’s leading practitioner of responding to questions about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by pivoting to Mexico and fentanyl. “What are we talking about?” he asked at a voter forum in February 2022 as the invasion was imminent. “We’re talking about a border 5,000 miles away between Ukraine and Russia. That’s what our leaders are focused on. If we had leaders half as concerned about their own border as they were about the Ukraine-Russia border, we would not have a border crisis in this country.””
“The cartels are now engaged in activities that make control over territory and local authorities a business imperative. Politicians and policemen are reluctant to stand up to them or are in their pockets. That helps explain why the Catholic Church stepped in to end the violence here. And Chilpancingo is the seat of the regional government, on the surface at least with the evident trappings of state authority. In the more remote hills around here and down to the Pacific coast around Acapulco, there are places run fully by the cartels. In nine municipalities they pick the mayor and police chiefs, according to a local security consultant who, out of fear for his safety, insisted we not use his name. Resistance is dangerous. Two years ago, in San Miguel Totolapan, the mayor and 20 other people were gunned down at his house and the town hall after defying a local cartel.
“The gangs love territorial control,” says Eduardo Guerrero, a former senior government security official who runs a consulting business. “You can do many kinds of business once you control territory. They seek political support. They intervene in elections aggressively. At the local level, we are losing sovereignty.””
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“Mexico’s criminal networks and their ability to whittle away at state power here present a national security threat to both Mexico and the U.S. These groups are growing in sophistication, corrupting state institutions and people, arming up and seeping into communities on both sides of the border. They pose a challenge to Mexico’s still fledgling democracy, at the federal level just 24 years old, and hence the stability of America’s southern neighbor. They have enabled a record number of migrants, mostly from other countries, to get north through Mexico. They’re responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in both countries. Some 26 per 100,000 people are killed in Mexico every year, the highest homicide rate among the world’s larger countries. Fentanyl, recently the most lucrative drug that the Mexican criminal groups traffic into the U.S., is responsible for the deaths of some 70,000 Americans every year.
Seen through the prism of violence there and its impact on the U.S., Mexico is the rich Afghanistan next door, a place where the central authorities have lost control over key territory to armed groups. Imagine if al Qaeda were killing that many Americans? “It may be the most important national security issue facing America, with the least amount of attention,” says Hank Crumpton, who ran the CIA’s covert operations in Afghanistan after 9/11 and works in security out of Texas. “I think of [the cartels] as enemies that exhibit in structure and behavior the same characteristics of terrorist networks and of an insurgency.”
Mexico’s narco-state problem matters for larger strategic reasons. Security is the biggest hurdle to Mexico fully becoming part of North America in more than a geographic sense — an economic and demographic engine for the region, and a strong and stable American ally in the global competition against China.
This more hopeful vision of Mexico can give you whiplash. The country is a daily contradiction. But put aside preconceptions and look even more closely at Mexico. The last couple decades have brought stunning violence — and stunning economic gains.”
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“If there was an easy solution, it would’ve been tried by now. The security expert Eduardo Guerrero, like some other experts on both sides of the border, says the Mexican authorities alone can’t handle the challenge from the cartels. “If we don’t stop them they will take over several key Mexican states at this rate,” he says. “We need help. We aren’t able to control these groups alone.”
Some polls in Mexico show support for U.S. help, including even the deployment of troops, which won’t be politically workable with the current government. Its critics are trying to nudge the option on the table.
What’s indisputable is that this isn’t only the Mexicans’ problem.”
“From the perspective of drug traffickers, fentanyl has several advantages over heroin. It is much more potent, which makes it easier to smuggle, and it can be produced much more cheaply and inconspicuously, since it does not require opium poppies. Xylazine has similar advantages: It is an inexpensive synthetic drug that can be produced without crops. And unlike fentanyl, it is not classified as a controlled substance, which makes it easier to obtain.
American drug users are not clamoring for xylazine in their fentanyl, any more than they were demanding fentanyl instead of heroin. The use of such adulterants is driven by the economics of prohibition. And as usual with illegal drugs, consumers do not know what they are getting. Whether it is vitamin E acetate in black market THC vapes, MDMA mixed with butylone, levamisole in cocaine, or fentanyl pressed into ersatz pain pills, prohibition reliably makes drug use more dangerous.
Much to the dismay of veterinarians, drug warriors alarmed by tranq have proposed treating xylazine as a controlled substance. As usual, they think the solution to a problem created by prohibition is more prohibition.”
“When governments try to stop people from consuming politically disfavored intoxicants, they make consumption of those substances more dangerous by creating a black market in which purity and potency are highly variable and unpredictable.”
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“Iran’s ban on alcohol consumption by Muslims forces drinkers to rely on illicit sources that sell iffy and possibly poisonous liquor. In a legal market, people who buy distilled spirits do not have to worry about methanol contamination.”
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“Fentanyl is much more potent than heroin, so it is easier to smuggle, and can be produced much more cheaply and inconspicuously since it does not require opium poppies. Xylazine has similar advantages: It is an inexpensive synthetic drug that can be produced without crops. And unlike fentanyl, it is not classified as a controlled substance, so it is easier to obtain.
The emergence of fentanyl as a heroin booster and substitute made potency even harder to predict. The consequences can be seen in record numbers of drug-related deaths.
The government aggravated that situation by restricting the supply of legally produced, reliably dosed opioids, which drove nonmedical users toward more dangerous substitutes and left bona fide patients to suffer from unrelieved pain.”
“The emergence of the animal tranquilizer xylazine as a fentanyl adulterant, like the emergence of fentanyl as a heroin booster and substitute, has prompted law enforcement officials to agitate for new legal restrictions and criminal penalties. That response is fundamentally misguided, because the threat it aims to address is a familiar consequence of prohibition, which creates a black market in which drug composition is highly variable and unpredictable. Instead of recognizing their complicity in maintaining and magnifying that hazard, drug warriors always think the answer is more of the same.”
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“Why is xylazine showing up in fentanyl? For the same reasons fentanyl started showing up in heroin. As a 2014 literature review in Forensic Science International notes, “illicit drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, are often adulterated with other agents to increase bulk and enhance or mimic the illicit drug’s effects.” Because xylazine and heroin have “some similar pharmacologic effects,” the authors say, “synergistic effects may occur in humans when xylazine is use as an adulterant of heroin.”
Before the DEA was warning us about xylazine in fentanyl, it was warning us about fentanyl in heroin, and both hazards are the result of laws that the DEA is dedicated to enforcing. From the perspective of drug traffickers, fentanyl has several advantages over heroin. It is much more potent, which makes it easier to smuggle, and it can be produced much more cheaply and inconspicuously, since it does not require the cultivation of opium poppies. Xylazine has some of the same advantages: It is an inexpensive synthetic drug that can be produced without crops. And unlike fentanyl, it is not currently classified as a controlled substance, which makes it easier and less legally risky to obtain.”
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“American drug users are not clamoring for xylazine in their fentanyl, any more than they were demanding fentanyl instead of heroin. In both cases, the use of adulterants is driven by the economics of the black market. And as usual with illegal drugs, consumers do not know what they are getting. The Times underlines that point by noting one response to the proliferation of xylazine: “Addiction medicine experts,” it says, “urged that newly introduced xylazine test strips, which people can use to check the drugs they buy, be as widely distributed as fentanyl test strips.”
The fundamental problem, of course, is the dangerous uncertainty created by prohibition. Unlike alcohol, cannabis products sold by state-licensed pot shops, or legally produced, reliably dosed pharmaceuticals, black-market drugs do not come with any assurance of quality or potency. The introduction of new adulterants like xylazine increases that hazard. We have seen this story play out many times before. Whether it is vitamin E acetate in black-market THC vapes, MDMA mixed with synthetic cathinones or butylone, levamisole in cocaine, or fentanyl pressed into ersatz pain pills, prohibition reliably makes drug use more dangerous.”
“Danny had chronic, searing pain from an electrocution accident years earlier. For treatment, he and Gretchen, his caretaker, traveled regularly from their home in Georgia to a pain management physician in Beverly Hills, California, to receive pharmaceutical fentanyl. But on November 1, DEA agents suspended the Beverly Hills physician’s narcotics prescribing license, having decided that he was inappropriately prescribing painkillers. A week later, Danny and Gretchen killed themselves.”
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“It was the most recent of the many dreadful outcomes that follow when cops practice medicine.”
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“The DEA has not formally charged the physician, David Bockoff, who has been practicing medicine with a spotless record in California for 53 years. He was treating many “pain refugees” like Danny: patients with chronic pain, well-managed with opioids, whose previous physicians had either closed after a DEA visit or abruptly cut off their pain medication fearing the wrath of law enforcement.”
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“Today, 38 states have laws on the books that limit the dosage and amount of pain relievers doctors can prescribe to their patients. Many of these laws have cast in stone the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s now-discredited 2016 Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain. The guideline came under so much criticism from pharmacologists, clinicians, and academic physicians that the agency revised it this past November. No matter. The flawed 2016 guideline remains the basis of the prescribing laws in most states. Doctors face losing their licenses or, worse, jail time if they violate these laws.”
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“All 50 states maintain Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs to surveil all prescriptions issued and filled within the state. These primarily serve as law enforcement tools. In most states, police drug task forces use them to go on warrantless fishing expeditions, hoping to find a doctor to bust for “inappropriate prescribing” or a patient they can arrest for “doctor shopping.” These programs have not reduced the overdose rate. If anything, they have driven non-medical users who cannot obtain diverted prescription pain pills to more dangerous drugs in the black market, causing the overdose rate to increase.”
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“opioid-related overdose deaths reached a record high in 2021, exceeding 71,000, 89 percent of which involved illicit fentanyl. Despite a dramatic drop in opioid prescribing, deaths have soared.
According to government data, addiction to prescription pain relievers has been relatively stable at under one percent in this century. Chronic pain patients rarely become addicted to opioids. The overdose crisis is a prohibition-induced crisis. Neither the practice of medicine nor the act of self-medication belongs in the realm of the criminal legal system.”
“it’s inaccurate to say that undocumented immigrants crossing an open border are chiefly responsible for fentanyl arriving at the country’s doors. In reality, U.S. citizens carrying the drug through legal ports of entry are primarily to blame.”