While fentanyl arrests may be down so far in Wyoming this year, seizures are skyrocketing in adjacent southern border states while a more deadly form of meth takes hold across the state.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency saw record seizures of fentanyl in Utah in June, surpassing the prior year by nearly 17%.
The arrests were part of DEA’s Operation Cash Out efforts to increase its ground game while simultaneously going after drug profits leaving the country.
Already this year, the DEA has seized a record number of more than 3.6 million fentanyl pills as of the first quarter of 2024, and is on pace to surpass the previous record, according to Steffan Tubbs, public affairs specialist for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s Rocky Mountain Division.
Wyoming is one of four states in the division, along with Utah, Colorado and Montana.
Utah “absolutely obliterated” its record for fentanyl seizures so far this year, said Tubbs, who added that the agency nabbed a record of 774,000 fentanyl pills in the state compared to 664,200 pills last year.
Colorado, likewise, is on par to hit its 2023 record of 2.61 million fentanyl pills seized at 1.8 million pills alone this year with four more months still to go.
“We are certainly on a trend here to easily break Colorado's record last year of 2.6 million,” Tubbs said. “I would not be surprised if we top 3 million pills seized in Colorado this year.
Wyoming Lagging
Meanwhile, Wyoming is so far lagging in seizures compared to last year.
The agency has collected 4,000 fentanyl pills compared to 23,700 last year, per DEA data. In Montana, likewise, numbers are down with 40,000 fentanyl pills seized compared to last year’s record of 106,500 pills.
Tubbs declined to say how many DEA agents are assigned to Wyoming or give details about how the operation is being carried out in the state.
The Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation, likewise, is also reporting a small downtick in fentanyl arrests, said Ryan Cox, DCI commander.
Last year, DCI counted 114 arrests for fentanyl, according to agency figures, compared to 63 the year prior. As of August, DCI counted 72 arrests specifically for fentanyl.
Scott McWilliams, DCI deputy director of the state crime lab, said they are still seeing an increase in drug samples testing positive for fentanyl, but that it’s “way less dramatic” than it’s been in recent years.
One drug that shows no signs of waning is meth, which is also being produced by cartels and siphoned across the border.
“Methamphetamines seem to be staying pretty strong, maybe filling some of the void where fentanyl is decreasing,” McWilliams said.
And while fentanyl seizures may be down slightly, arrests in general are on the rise again this year, Cox noted.
No Way To Quantify
The skyrocketing arrests in Wyoming’s neighboring border states may account for the downward trend in both Wyoming and Montana, Tubbs said, but there’s no way to quantify it.
“So far in in 2024, the numbers are definitely trending lower as far as our seizures [in Wyoming], but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's time to celebrate that fentanyl is slowly disappearing from the highways, streets or the roads of Wyoming, because it's not,” Tubbs said.
It’s certainly plausible that the agency is catching fentanyl along the major distribution corridors intended for distribution into Wyoming, Tubbs said.
The numbers are hard to trust because one major arrest could greatly skew the numbers upward.
“It could change in a moment’s notice,” he said.
Multibillion-Dollar Industry
Fentanyl is a multibillion-dollar industry for Mexican-based cartels with the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels responsible for most of the sales in the Rocky Mountain region and across the U.S., Tubbs said.
Legal fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that has a legitimate medical purpose when prescribed by doctors to treat pain, primarily following surgery. It’s about 100 times more potent than morphine, according to the DEA.
Illicit fentanyl, meanwhile, is produced in clandestine labs mostly in Mexico that is smuggled into the U.S. to be sold on the illegal drug market.
Tubbs said the labs are unsanitary and unregulated and DEA agents have even seen labs set up in bathrooms and cow pastures.
The illicit fentanyl can be sold as powders or nasal sprays, but is most commonly pressed into counterfeit pills disguised as blue “M30” oxycodone pills that contain unknown quantities of fentanyl that are often lethal.
As little as 2 milligrams, or roughly a few granules of sugar, can be fatal. Given the lack of oversight on production, each pill can vary wildly in fentanyl amounts.
One DEA lab test determined that seven out of 10 pills seized contained lethal doses of fentanyl.
It remains the deadliest drug threating the nation, according to the DEA, and is the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45.
Meth Overdoses On The Rise
That said, meth being funneled across the border by the Sinaloa Cartel in particular is contributing to a steep increase in meth-related poisoning deaths that are rapidly catching up to fentanyl overdoses.
Last year, there were 123 overdose deaths in Wyoming, according to figures provided by Kim Deti, spokesperson for the Wyoming Department of Health. If those deaths, 81 involved opioids, while 52 were caused by fentanyl and 49 involved meth.
This number was higher than the 98 overdoses in 2022, of which 81 involved opioids, followed by fentanyl at 56 and 50 related to meth.
As Tubbs noted, these deaths are just collateral damage for the cartels whose sole purpose is profiting from drug sales.
For The Love Of Money
“All of this is happening for one reason: money,” Tubbs said. “End of sentence. End of story.”
The cartels’ goal is to get people addicted, and they don’t care how many people they kill because for every person that dies, there’s 10 to 20 more becoming addicted, he said.
“Cartels have no value for human life and that’s the cost of doing business, which is frankly pathetic,” he said.
Tubbs said it’s safe to say there is cartel presence in Wyoming, including Indian reservations throughout the Rocky Mountain region. As Tubbs noted, Wyoming is a lucrative market because the pills get more expensive the farther north a person gets.
For example, cartels make the pills for a couple pennies per pill. That same pill might then sell for 60 cents in bulk in Tucson, Arizona or El Paso, Texas. The price increases to $5 a pill or less in Salt Lake City or Denver. By the time it hits Wyoming, that same pull might sell for $30 or $40.
The cost on reservations can be even higher, and anecdotally Tubbs has heard of illicit fentanyl pills selling as high as $60 to $100 on reservations.
“You can see why they [the cartels] don’t have any concern about who they may kill, because the money is astronomical,” he said.
Hitting Where It Hurts
Given the high profit margins, Operation Cash Out is likewise going after the money service business (MSBs) and financial institutions that make it possible for the cartels to smuggle laundered drug money out of the country.
More than $63 billion in remittances were sent to Mexico in 2023, with 96% coming from the U.S., according to Mexico’s Central Bank.
It’s impossible to determine what percentage of that money came from selling drugs, Tubbs said, but the dollar figure is surmountable.
“The only thing they care about is their money,” said David Olesky, acting special agent in charge of DEA’s Rocky Mountain Field Division. “This interagency operation intends to target the networks and seize their assets through building stronger relationships with the private sector financial community.”
Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.
