The amount of drugs confiscated is staggering. Quoting a CBS News report on Friday, The Blaze reports two men face an array of drug charges after they were allegedly caught in California with enough fentanyl to kill 4.7 million people. In addition, authorities confiscated 800 pounds of methamphetamine.
As reported, “Authorities say 36-year-old Edgar Alfonso Lamas and 53-year-old Carlos Raygozaparedes were busted with the drugs in Ocean County, California — the largest drug bust to take place in the Southern California county in nearly two decades.” The police made the discovery on March 17 at a Buena Park home. The extraordinary aggregate quantity of drugs included 821 pounds of methamphetamine, approximately 190 pounds of cocaine, and more than 20 pounds of fentanyl pills.
The article offered this assessment: “Millions of unsuspecting people have the grim reaper looking over their shoulder and they have no idea how close they actually are to dying from taking a single pill. Fentanyl is cheap, it’s easy to get and it is killing our children, our coworkers, and tens of thousands of innocent Americans who don’t have to die,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement on the huge drug bust.” See the video embedded in the article.
Lamas and Raygozaparedes have pleaded not guilty on the drug charges and remain in custody on $5 million bail and are due in court on June 7. They face a maximum sentence of 37 years and four months in prison if convicted on all counts, which include multiple felony charges of possession for sale of a controlled substance and multiple counts of the sale or transportation for sale of a controlled substance. They both face felony enhancements due to the controlled substances exceeding 80 kilograms by weight and two felony enhancements as the controlled substances exceeded 20 kilograms by weight or 400 liters by liquid volume.
California is not unique regarding the abundance of these drugs. As reported, “On Wednesday, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration released a notice warning state and federal officials that the drug is behind a national spike in mass overdose events. Drug Enforcement Administration administrator Anne Milgram said, “The DEA is seeing a nationwide spike in fentanyl-related mass-overdose events involving three or more overdoses occurring close in time at the same location.”
“In just the past two months, there have been at least 7 confirmed mass overdose events across the United States resulting in 58 overdoses and 29 overdose deaths,” the letter continued. “Many of the victims of these mass overdose events thought they were ingesting cocaine and had no idea they were in fact ingesting fentanyl.”
District Attorney Spitzer added, “With fentanyl in an estimated 40 percent of street drugs, it’s not a matter of if but when someone you know and love dies from fentanyl. We have to continue to do everything we can to combat this deadly drug epidemic and save lives.”
