For 7 deadly years, feds flubbed fentanyl fight, Post reports, naming DEA, DHS, HHS, CDC, White House drug office

Photos of fentanyl victims in the lobby of DEA headquarters (Photo by Salwan Georges, The Washington Post)

"During the past seven years, as soaring quantities of fentanyl flooded into the United States, strategic blunders and cascading mistakes by successive U.S. administrations allowed the most lethal drug crisis in American history to become significantly worse," The Washington Post reports in a long story that begins a massive package on the problem.

"Presidents from both parties failed to take effective action in the face of one of the most urgent threats to the nation’s security, one that claims more lives each year than car accidents, suicides or gun violence," Nick Miroff, Scott Higham, Steven Rich, Salwan Georges and Erin Patrick O'Connor write. "Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 49, according to a Post analysis."

Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids are primarily the responsibility of the Drug Enforcement Administration, which "stumbled through a series of missteps as it confronted the biggest challenge in its 50-year history," the Post reports. "The agency was slow to respond as Mexican cartels supplanted Chinese producers, creating a massive illicit pharmaceutical industry that is now producing more fentanyl than ever. . . . The DEA said it is now taking direct aim at the Mexican cartels and the fentanyl epidemic" but "acknowledged that the government remained too focused on heroin at the onset of the crisis."

Other agencies also fell short. The Department of Homeland Security "failed to ramp up scanning and inspection technology at official crossings, instead channeling $11 billion toward the construction of a border wall that does little to stop fentanyl traffickers," the Post reports. "The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the executive branch office headed by the 'drug czar' and tasked with coordinating the government’s response, spent years fending off elimination and struggled to create an effective strategy to combat the scourge. The office lost its seat in the White House Cabinet and remains sidelined." David King, who runs a federal drug task force in San Diego, told the Post, “Law enforcement did the best it could. We can only do so much. But in Washington, they have been very slow to respond to this and now we are at the confluence of paralysis.”

Another bureaucratic failure: While "Narcotics agents say street-level demand for fentanyl is rising fast because so many new users are getting hooked," the Department of Health and Human Services "has not tracked the rise of fentanyl and does not know how many Americans are using it," the Post reports. That could stem from the fact that fentanyl is being added to other drugs, and is now involved in most overdoses. HHH's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "is unable to track overdose deaths in real-time," the Post notes. "Its published data is one year behind. . . . There is one federal system that collects both fatal and nonfatal overdose data in real-time in several regions of the country. But the system, called ODMAP, is kept from public view. A database launched by the drug czar’s office last week maps some nonfatal overdoses, which can highlight regions where deaths are likely to follow. Without comprehensive data, the federal government is driving blind." John Walters, drug czar for presidents of both parties, told the Post, “This is like tracking the epidemic by visiting cemeteries.”

The Post also has a story on why fentanyl is so deadly and a collection of earlier stories on the opioid epidemic. It promises five more stories, including how "a DEA agent tracked the source of fentanyl in Mormon country" and "Inside the daunting hunt for the ingredients of fentanyl and meth."