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The reasons behind the decrease of fentanyl seizures in the U.S. and along the Mexico-U.S. border are complex.
MEXICO CITY â After years of confiscating rising amounts of fentanyl, the opioid that has fueled the most lethal drug epidemic in American history, U.S. officials are confronting a new and puzzling reality at the Mexican border.
Fentanyl seizures are plummeting.
The phenomenon has received little notice in Washington, where the Trump administration has made fentanyl-trafficking cartels a national-security priority. âNarcotics of all kinds are pouring across our borders,â said a White House statement in March, announcing stiff tariffs on Mexico and Canada.
New data suggest a more complex story. The U.S. governmentâs average monthly seizures of fentanyl at the Mexican border have dropped by more than half â from 1,700 pounds in 2024, to 746 pounds this year, according to Customs and Border Protection data. The White House says the drop is âthanks to President Trumpâs policies empowering law enforcement officials to dismantle drug trafficking networks.â Yet the decline started before Trump took office in January. (While officials only manage to detect part of the fentanyl crossing the border, the figure serves as a proxy for supply).
The contraction represents something of a mystery, say antidrug agents and researchers. Are Mexican cartels producing less fentanyl? Or have they simply found new ways to sneak it across the border? Fentanyl is still cheap and widely available in the United States, according to analysts and drug enforcement agents. Yet overdose deaths plunged nearly 27 percent last year, compared with 2023, according to estimates published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The biggest cause of such deaths are illicit synthetic opioids, especially fentanyl.
A harrowing number of Americans are still being killed by drugs â an estimated 80,391 last year. But scientists have rarely seen such a sharp decline in overdose deaths. Interviews with more than a dozen drug-enforcement officers, academics, medical personnel and scientists point to some surprising shifts in the opioid epidemic.
Hereâs whatâs changing with fentanyl
U.S. seizures at the Mexican border are down almost 30 percent for the first half of this fiscal year, compared with the same period in 2024. They have shrunk by even more since the first half of 2023 â from 13,804 pounds to 6,749 pounds. (Those numbers are for the first six months of each fiscal year, which starts in October).âOne cannot deny there is a big drop,â said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies the fentanyl crisis. âHow long itâs going to last is the critical thing.â
The decline is occurring even as the Trump administration has deployed thousands of troops to the border and expanded drone flights. With more boots on the ground, youâd think seizures would go up â not down.
Some security officials think cartels could be seeking ways to get around border security forces â by mailing the fentanyl, or digging tunnels. After all, thereâs still plenty of fentanyl available on U.S. streets. This month, DEA agents confiscated more than 880 pounds of the opioid in a âhistoricâ operation, most of it in Albuquerque. Yet, even including such operations in the U.S. interior, fentanyl seizures have been declining.
The purity rate of fentanyl is also going down, according to the DEAâs annual Drug Threat Assessment. Ed Sisco, a chemist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which has an independent drug-analysis program, said there are a growing number of additives in fentanyl samples â including the less-potent heroin.
âThe increase of heroin could be the thing thatâs showing us thereâs a strain in the fentanyl supply,â he said. Producing heroin is more costly and labor-intensive than cooking fentanyl; dealers could be adding it since they have a shortage. But researchers caution that they need more evidence to be sure.
U.S. Army soldiers prepare to move Stryker armored infantry transport vehicles April 5 to deploy along the U.S.-Mexico border at Fort Bliss in El Paso. (Paul Ratje/For The Washington Post)
The drop in fentanyl may reflect Sinaloa cartel woes
One explanation for a decline in fentanyl at the U.S. border is the war within the Sinaloa cartel, the main producer of the opioid, officials say.Since September, two factions have been brawling in Sinaloa â one led by the sons of legendary drug lord Joaquin âEl Chapoâ Guzman, the other loyal to Ismael âEl Mayoâ Zambada. Hundreds of people have been killed. Gunmen throwing grenades and firing assault rifles have blocked Highway 15, the regionâs main road to the U.S. border.
The government of President Claudia Sheinbaum has taken advantage of the turmoil in the cartel to arrest scores of leading members. That may have made it even harder for them to keep up fentanyl production.
There have been shortages of ingredients for fentanyl
The DEAâs annual threat report says there are signs that âmany Mexico-based fentanyl cooks are having difficulty obtaining some key precursor chemicalsâ to make the drug.U.S. antidrug agents have been trying to outwit precursor suppliers. One program run by Homeland Security Investigations, Operation Hydra, has resulted in the seizure of more than 3.4 million pounds of chemicals.
China â a major source for precursor chemicals â also cracked down on the illicit exports under pressure from the Biden administration. By the end of last year, fentanyl producers âwere struggling to find the typical precursor. They were cooking and experimenting with all kinds of stuff,â Felbab-Brown said.
Itâs not clear that Chinaâs stepped-up enforcement will continue. In February, its government warned that tariffs imposed by Trump to discourage precursor shipments would âharm the counternarcotics cooperation.â
Maybe the demand for fentanyl is dropping
If less fentanyl is reaching U.S. streets, why isnât the price going up? It could be that demand has decreased, said Nabarun Dasgupta, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.One reason: Drug suppliers have increasingly adulterated fentanyl with xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer that causes ghastly flesh wounds. It also makes people very sleepy. Instead of shooting up several times a day, fentanyl users might be injecting less of the substance when itâs mixed with xylazine. âThey donât want to conk out all the time,â Dasgupta said.
A possible factor in the drop in overdose deaths is a shift by some users to smoking fentanyl rather than injecting it, said Alex J. Krotulski, a director of the Center for Forensic Science Research & Education, a nonprofit that researches drugs. âWith smoking, youâre able to better control your drug intake and in turn may not get as much fentanyl in your system versus injecting a full syringe,â he said. The trend could contribute to less demand for the opioid.
Researchers have also theorized that fentanyl has already killed so many users that the market for the drug has shrunk.
Demographic trends could be playing a role. People in their 20s arenât using fentanyl as much as older Americans, Dasgupta said. âYouâre getting this generational effect â illicit opioids are not cool,â he said.
Some academics think the drop in overdose deaths is so abrupt that a constriction in fentanyl supply has to be a factor. The decline in fatal overdoses is âconsistent with a supply reduction that began in October/November of 2023,â said Jonathan Caulkins, a drug policy researcher at Carnegie Mellon University.
Of course, there are other explanations for the downturn in overdose deaths. In recent years, federal and local governments â as well as grassroots harm-reduction groups â have made enormous efforts to distribute naloxone, a drug that reverses opioid overdoses. Officials have also expanded treatment and prevention programs.
Caulkins said the U.S. government has failed to establish a robust system of data on fentanyl supply, purity and usage, making it difficult to know whatâs going on. The key metric isnât how much drugs are seized; itâs whether crime groups can produce more, to make up for whatâs been confiscated. If their fentanyl-making capacity isnât degraded, âthey just replace it soon after,â he said.
Not all the news about the shifts in opioids is good
The overdose crisis is hardly over.Public health authorities are concerned that the Trump administrationâs budget cuts could hurt programs that have promoted overdose antidotes and addiction treatment. The White House has denied its policies might reverse the progress in reducing fatal overdoses. âWe are building a leaner, more accountable public health response grounded on outcomes,â the White House said in a statement. âThe goal isnât to do more of the same â itâs to save lives and continue the overall decrease in overdose deaths.â
A recent survey published by the Rand research firm underscored how much is still unknown about the fentanyl epidemic. It found Americansâ rates of illegal fentanyl use were 20 times higher than estimates from the governmentâs annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
Even that survey might not be carried out next year, said David Powell, the Rand studyâs lead author. âAll the people working on it were fired,â he said.
