NYC’s Fentanyl Crisis: NY DEA Chief on How the Federal Government is Fighting Back

NEW YORK CITY – Drug overdose and drug intoxication, the majority of which are related to fentanyl, kill more New Yorkers each year than murder, suicide and traffic accidents combined.

“This is a crisis, an epidemic unlike anything we’ve ever seen in drug law,” Special Agent in Charge Frank A. Tarentino III, who heads the New York Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), told Patch. “It’s the greatest threat we’ve ever faced.”

Patch spoke with Tarentino earlier this week, in honor of National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day on Wednesday, August 21.

What is Fentanyl?

Fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid, was first developed in 1959 as an intravenous anesthetic. According to the DEA, it is about 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin.

Until about 10 years ago, the drug was relatively unknown outside the medical community, but it is transported to New York City through a complex global supply chain.

Chemicals from China and India are processed into powders and pills in Mexico. They flow across the southwestern border and travel through transportation networks across the United States to a number of regional distribution centers, one of which is New York City.

‘Pill factories and warehouses’

“New York City is right in the belly of the beast, in terms of the destination city for drug distribution. This is where most drug cartels send their large amounts of drugs because it is a geographically ideal location for the entire region,” Tarentino explained.

While some of the product is transported via shipping containers and postal packages, most drugs arrive via trucks or motor vehicles, Tarentino said.

“The Bronx is really ground zero because of its location, because of the transit arteries that run through it to the northeast and to the southeast. There are a number of different pill mills and stash houses in the Bronx that really facilitate these covert operations,” he explained.

Wholesalers move huge quantities of drugs to mid-level distributors, who in turn break the product down into smaller quantities that end up in the hands of street dealers. It is these dealers who sell to individual users.

“The entire Bronx is a concern for us, again, because of the transportation routes and the transportation corridors that go through the Bronx, and because of the density (of the borough) and the anonymity of a lot of the locations. Hunt’s Point or some of the really dense high-rises, those are great locations to store drugs. (Washington Heights) is just as attractive,” he said.

Other boroughs, such as Queens and Brooklyn, also face major challenges.

“As far as Queens goes, Flushing is a major area of ​​interest for us, for drug trafficking and illicit financing, or money laundering, and in Brooklyn we are seeing an increase in specific fentanyls like carfentanil. We have had more arrests and seizures in Brooklyn (related to carfentanil) than any of the other boroughs,” Tarentino said.

‘Like Uber Eats’

Unfortunately, overdose data shows that New York City is not just a distribution center.

“You have a huge market here, almost nine million people,” Tarentino said.

It’s hard to pinpoint where drug sales are happening. The trade is increasingly volatile, and many dealers are now delivering their products to customers, Tarentino explained, citing the recent investigation into William Ortega, who ran a drug delivery service whose products killed three New Yorkers in a single day.

“It’s similar to how Uber Eats ships food,” Tarentino said.

‘A very sinister, very bad business model’

Although a significant number of users use fentanyl intentionally, many ingest it accidentally.

“If you have people who are dependent on substance use and are using cocaine, meth, heroin, and they think they’re buying that, but they’re actually buying drugs with fentanyl in them, that’s an intoxication,” he said. “We’re seeing more and more intoxications.”

If you thought drug dealers were worried about wiping out their clientele, think again.

“If you have a couple hundred pounds of cocaine in New York, at the wholesale or mid-level, it’s pure cocaine. It’s the street dealer who decides whether or not he or she is going to sell drugs with additives.”

“It’s a profit-driven business and their only goal is to make money, to get as many people addicted as possible, so if you can increase the addiction, you can sell more of your product. Whether people die or not is irrelevant because enough people will still want to buy it. So they deliberately mix fentanyl with other drugs, and if more people get addicted, they get a bigger customer base.”

“It’s a very sinister, very evil business model.”

What are federal authorities doing about this?

“We are interrupting the entire supply chain,” Tarentino said, referring to the recent criminal conviction of former Mexican Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna. “We aim to defeat the cartels, Sinaloa and Jalisco, and the other drug trafficking organizations that are responsible for the drugs that enter our streets.”

Data is the key.

“We have done things in the last 24 months that we have not done in my 26 years in drug law, and that is we have done a very methodical and systematic threat mapping in a place where we have a very good understanding of where these cartels are in the United States and around the world,” he said.

Back in New York

Closer to home, Tarentino discussed different approaches to prosecuting some of the small-scale drug crimes taking place in the city.

“From the DEA’s perspective, we always try to handle our cases through the federal system for a variety of reasons, but primarily to make sure that we get the most aggressive and the most significant prosecution and punishment, and so that we don’t have the situations that occur at the city and state level with respect to the justice system,” he said, referring to recent city and state actions (or inaction, depending on your perspective) on drug-related charges.

“We’ve had a lot of success in the Southern District of New York, and we’ve been very successful in prosecuting street dealers who are responsible for causing overdoses and poisonings, using death by cause or death by dealer charges. We’ve been successful in bringing some really great cases.”

“Manslaughter by” or “manslaughter by dealer” refers to criminal charges that can be filed against a drug dealer or distributor if the drugs they supplied resulted in someone’s death.

Spreading the Word

Education is essential and Tarentino recently visited about 15 secondary schools in the city.

“It is critical to inform the community about what we are seeing, which is based on intelligence and data,” he said.

These include events like the recent takeover of Times Square by nonprofit Facing Fentanyl.

“It is an opportunity to stand shoulder to shoulder with the families who have borne the burden and suffered the most, because they are the ones who have had to bury their loved ones due to overdose or poisoning. And standing with them is really powerful,” Tarentino said.

More than 3,000 New Yorkers died of drug overdoses in 2022, the most recent year for which complete annual data are available. Opioids, particularly fentanyl, were involved in the vast majority of these deaths.

“Fentanyl does not discriminate,” Tarentino said. “There is no race, creed, religion, no socioeconomic status in life that allows you to escape this poison that is killing Americans everywhere. It is the most accessible and most addictive drug we have ever seen.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 100,000 Americans will die from drug overdoses in 2023. About 74,000 of those deaths involved fentanyl or other synthetic opioids.

Have you been affected by fentanyl in New York City? Email [email protected].