DETROIT — Last month, the alleged leader of MS-13, Edenilson Velasquez Larin, was arrested on the Ohio Turnpike near Sandusky.
He is accused of running the violent street gang’s drug empire in New York.
The arrest of a national figure in northwest Ohio may have surprised some residents, but, according to law enforcement officials, our region is a natural hub for transnational drug traffickers.
“I-75 is a main conduit through six states – all the way from Michigan down to Florida,” Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent in Charge, Orville Greene, said.
In Ohio, no area has seen more drug seizures by the Ohio State Highway Patrol than Wood County. There have been 2,057 drug seizures in the past five years – nearly twice as many as any other section of I-75 within the state.
The number includes 23 seizures of deadly fentanyl pills and powder.
Over the past year, Greene and other agents in his office tried to disrupt traffickers in Michigan, Ohio and northern Kentucky. “Operation Last Mile” resulted in the seizure of more than 3.8 million doses of fentanyl and 201 pounds of amphetamine. The big players in the drug trade are Mexican cartels.
“DEA focused its resources on targeting and disrupting associates and distributors tied to the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels,” Greene said. “These are the people fueling the poisoning and overdose epidemic in this country by making it possible for the cartels to sell their poison to our family, friends and loved ones.”
At the heart of the fight is fentanyl.
“If you go back to around 2013 and 2015 when we first started hearing about fentanyl, it was being mixed with heroin. You would get heroin that was cut with fentanyl, but not a whole lot of fentanyl,” Greene said. “As early as 2016 or 2017, fentanyl almost completely replaced heroin in what we were seizing.”
The biggest concern with fentanyl is that it is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. As little as two milligrams is enough to kill a person.
“DEA laboratories have found that six out of every 10 fake fentanyl pills we seize contain well over two milligrams. So now there’s a 60 percent chance that one pill can actually kill you. That’s not a scare tactic, it’s facts. It’s a reality,” Greene said.
Fentanyl's path to the US
Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels get precursor chemicals from China and produce fentanyl for as little as 10 cents a pill, and it’s much easier to smuggle in pill and powder form than bricks of cocaine or bundles of heroin.
“Once those pills hit the United States, you can sell one pill for $5, up to $20 to $40,” Greene said. “There’s no growing season, it’s cheap to manufacture, and the return on your investment is just tremendous.
U.S. Rep. Bob Latta (R., Bowling Green) recently championed the HALT fentanyl act, which would permanently classify fentanyl – even in a diluted form - as a schedule 1 drug, putting it on the level of heroin and making it easier for authorities to prosecute dealers. The House passed the bill. The Senate has yet to vote, but the bill has the support of President Biden.
Latta repeated the same numbers as Greene.
“When they make these pills down in Mexico and get them up here, they’re doing it for 10 cents, so when you think about this, they’re killing Americans for 10 cents,” he said.
And large numbers of Americans are dying. There were more than 111,000 overdose deaths in the United States last year. More than 75,000 deaths were tied to opioids, including fentanyl. In Ohio, the 2022 numbers haven’t been released, but there were about 5,200 fatal overdoses in 2021, with a large percentage of those opioid-related.
Deadly and easy to get
Asked about the biggest change he has seen in the drug fight, Captain Anthony O’Rourke of the Detroit Police Department mentioned the high number of deaths he is seeing, mentioning that when there is a death from fentanyl, other users often want a dose from the same batch.
“These users are chasing the next high and not really concerned about what they put in their bodies,” O’Rourke said.
He said the availability of Narcan, which can reverse an opioid overdose, is making the problem even worse.
“We’ll have situations that arise where a group will get together to use their drugs and ‘we’ll have a spotter with Narcan. If I feel myself going out, they can actually hit me with the Narcan up my nose and bring me back.’ It’s almost like a safety net while you’re doing some really dangerous stuff,” he said.
Like Greene, he said cartels are driving the drug trade in the city, and they are getting more sophisticated in getting drugs into the city and distributing them.
“In Detroit, it used to be that dealers would take over vacant houses. Not seeing that so much anymore,” O’Rourke said. “There’s a lot more of dial-a-dope. People will pick it up and deliver it by car, making it a lot harder to track.”
It’s a challenge that the DEA also struggles to address.
“Obviously, cartels and their associates and individuals who are looking to traffic drugs and fentanyl and fake pills, in particular, have found the Internet to be a conduit that they’ve found that to be a very easy way to reach a larger demographic.”
Emojis act as advertisements on social media.
A rocket ship, cannon ball and explosion combination designates “high potency” fentanyl or other drugs laced with an opioid for an added kick. Unfortunately, it’s a kick that’s sending an increasing number of Americans to an early grave.
“Fentanyl poisoning don’t just happen to other people,” Greene said. “You don’t have to be a user, or a chronic misuser of drugs, for that to happen to you.”
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