ROCKWOOD, MICH. (WWJ) A U.S. Customs and Border Patrol K9 team has been credited with detecting enough lethal contraband in Wayne County to kill half-a-million people.
In a statement, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol said their officers at the Gibraltar Station in Rockwood responded to a request on September 23 from a cargo shipping facility to check out apparent narcotics inside a package.
After arriving at the location, a K-9 alerted his handler that something wasn’t right.
“Once it was opened, agents noted that the package contained a Saran-wrapped bundle inside filled with white powder,” the statement said.
The substance (shown in the two pictures in this article)) was identified as Fentanyl hydrochloride. The box contained about two to two-and-a-half pounds, enough to kill about 500,000 people.
“Hard narcotics are a significant threat to our national security. Detroit Sector agents do all they can to stop this poison from entering our communities,” said U.S. Border Patrol Detroit Sector Chief Patrol Agent Robert Danley.
The seized fentanyl was turned over to a local office of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
The DEA describes fentanyl as a “synthetic opioid” that is at least 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. Pharmaceutical fentanyl is sometimes used for intense pain management for cancer patients, applied via a patch on the skin. However, it’s frequently abused and added to heroin to increase its potency or disguised as heroin, leading to overdose deaths. The DEA reports nearly 108,000 people nationwide have died of overdose deaths between January 2021 to January 2022, about 67% of them involved fentanyl.