Fast, cheap and deadly: How fentanyl replaced heroin and hooked America

Reuters obtained and analyzed ten year’s worth of data on drugs seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents at ports of entry along the southern border.

The dataset provides more detail, over a longer period, than publicly available CBP statistics. It includes over 85,000 individual drug seizure events, providing a granular look at the scale and speed of the biggest shift in drug smuggling in a generation. It shows:

Fentanyl seizures by weight more than tripled in the last quarter of 2022 compared to a year earlier.

Heroin now makes up less than 7% of opioid doses seized at the border. Four years ago it was 80%.

Pills were mentioned in nearly half of fentanyl border seizure incidents in 2022, up from just 6% five years earlier.