Victims of fentanyl are not just illicit drug users

(NEXSTAR) — According to the White House, when President Biden took office, deaths due to fentanyl were on the rise. Now at the end of his term, that trend has reversed course. Who those victims are, however, has not changed.

“One of the things that’s so scary about fentanyl and other synthetic drugs is that they’re often mixed into other drugs,” said White House deputy homeland security advisor Jen Daskal in an interview with Nexstar Media’s Chip Brewster.

“We hear stories over and over again of individuals who are buying what they think is a Xanax pill and there’s lethal doses of fentanyl mixed in… so there’s a real mix in terms of who the victims are here and what the causes are,” said Daskal. “There’s both, obviously, long-term addiction issues which require treatment and interventions, and there is also a significant amount of overdoses.”

The interview came shortly after Biden held a bilateral meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and joined other world leaders in an event highlighting their partnership to combat the production and distribution of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which drive tens of thousands of deaths in the U.S. annually alone.

As the president approaches the end of his term, and his vice president campaigns to replace him, a clear effort is being made to communicate the administration’s actions to combat fentanyl and other synthetic opioids.

For instance, the U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday said it sanctioned two Mexican businesses — an ice cream chain and a local pharmacy — for allegedly using proceeds of fentanyl trafficking to finance their operations tied to the Sinaloa cartel.

Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control — the U.S. agency that combats illicit funds and money laundering — said people previously cited for money laundering had set up a chain of ice cream and popsicle shops in the state of Sinaloa.

“President Biden and Vice President Harris are committed to using every tool at our disposal to combat the cartels that are poisoning our communities with fentanyl and other deadly drugs,” said Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo in a statement.

The cartel is responsible for a significant portion of fentanyl trafficking into the U.S. They precursor chemicals from China and India to make the synthetic opioid and smuggle it into the United States, where it causes about 70,000 overdose deaths annually .

In July, U.S. President Joe Biden announced a series of proposals aimed at curbing the ongoing drug epidemic . These include a push on Congress to pass legislation to establish a pill press and tableting machine registry and enhance penalties against convicted drug smugglers and traffickers of fentanyl.

Brewster and Daskal also discussed seizures of fentanyl over the last two fiscal years which Daskal said total more than the previous five fiscal years combined, as well as how the administration has spent $82 billion to support drug treatment programs. Watch the entire, unedited interview in the video above.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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