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Tom Ridge: Get Drugs out of the US Mail
[Detroit News] Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a successful takedown of drug traffickers in Operation Saigon Sunset, dismantling a major criminal network responsible for trafficking drugs from Detroit to Huntington, West Virginia. The investigation was massive, seizing enough fentanyl to kill a quarter-million people.Every American should be grateful for the brave law enforcement agents who took these drugs off our streets, but they should be troubled that toxic synthetic opioids like fentanyl are able to enter Michigan so regularly and easily in the first place. A security gap in the global postal service enables much of this deadly trade, and is helping fuel the opioid epidemic in Michigan and across the country. Fentanyl, carfentanil and other potent synthetic opioids are commonly manufactured abroad before being shipped into the United States and mixed, sometimes unknowingly, into the drug supply. National security and law enforcement agencies like Customs and Border Protection use basic security information — advance electronic data, or AED — to screen for dangerous material and stop illegal drugs at ports of entry. While AED is required on all foreign packages delivered by private carriers, it is not mandated for packages sent via the global postal network and delivered by the U.S. Postal Service. This has left international drug traffickers with easy access to reach American markets. A bipartisan report from the United States Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) found that only 36 percent of foreign packages delivered by the USPS include AED, and that the limited data provided is too low quality to be useful. Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2018-05-15 |
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