The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has seized enough fentanyl to kill 19 million Americans in 2026 alone, FBI Director Kash Patel revealed in his weekly internal update.
The Trump administration has made the drug war one of its top priorities in the second term as the flow of fentanyl quadrupled into American communities under former President Joe Biden’s watch.
According to Patel, year to date, the FBI has seized 250 kgs of fentanyl — over 551 lbs. That is enough to kill 19 million Americans.
The FBI director also spoke about results of their work against cartels and traffickers at the annual Rx and Illicit Drug Summit in Nashville.
“Thanks to your efforts with partners, you seized enough fentanyl to kill 178 million Americans, a 31-percent increase over the year prior — resulting in a 20 percent drop in overdose deaths since 2024,” he said in his internal update, referencing the summit and signaling that this is just the beginning of their work on this critical front.
This coincides with the stark reality that over 100,000 Americans die from some sort of drug overdose every year, many from fentanyl.
Last summer, President Donald Trump signed legislation increasing the penalties for fentanyl trafficking into the United States. Months later in December, Trump signed an executive order classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.
“I’m taking one more step to protect Americans from the scourge of deadly fentanyl flooding into our country,” Trump said at the time, adding, “No bomb does what this is doing.”
The Trump administration has worked to cut the supply chain at its knees in a variety of ways — not only stopping the inflow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. interior by cracking down on cartels but targeting China via tariffs for its role in flooding the U.S. market with fentanyl as the leading global supplier of precursor chemicals used to make the deadly drug.
As Breitbart News reported, the flow of fentanyl quadrupled into the U.S. under Biden’s watch.
“Four times as much fentanyl is flowing across the United States-Mexico border under President Joe Biden compared to two years prior when former President Trump was in office,” Breitbart News reported in the summer of 2022.
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