OP, can you edit the title to clarify that the seized weight was 153kg and the pills contained fentanyl, so as to clarify that the pills were not pure fent?
I suspect that title is wrong, and the US Department of Justice’s press release person made a mistake in writing the title from the article, but I don’t know if we should correct on our end – I mean, the post as-submitted accurately reflects the title that they’re putting out. Like, I don’t think that we should claim that the USDOJ is saying something other than what they are.
It’s also not impossible that there’s some kind of error on our end – I mean, I’m not a doctor – or possibly that the error is elsewhere in the press release (like, maybe the pill count is in error). Maybe they actually have a gram measurement, rather than a kilogram measurement, and it’s that the unit is wrong.
Maybe edit the post body text to indicate that the title might be in error and see the comments for discussion?
I am confused, that is exactly what the title is saying, right?
Edit: I believe that is 1.4M pills containing 153 Kgs of fentanyl.
From the article:
1.4 million fentanyl pills totaling 152.98 kilograms.
This is probably better phrasing.
The weight of the pills is 153kg, not the weight of the fentanyl within the pills. That is substantially different. Like orders of magnitude off.
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It’s misleading, because that’s the weight of the pills, in total. The pills are not pure fentanyl, it’s only a small amount that’s added to the mixture for other drugs. We’re talking like 1000:1 ratios here.
153 kg of pure fentanyl is an unrealistic amount to exist in general. In reality, there’s probably only a few grams of actual fentanyl in that entire volume.
No. It says there was nearly 153 kg of pills. It does not specify how much of that was fentanyl by mass (probably not much, because a pill of pure fentanyl would probably kill you real quick).
153 KG(!)
2mg can be fatal.
Sooo… 76,500,000 potentially fatal doses O_O
Yeah, wait a minute.
Mexican national admits attempted distribution of 1.4 million pills containing nearly 153 kilograms of fentanyl
So…what, does each pill have like 50 times the potentially-fatal level? That’d have to be 109mg/pill.
“potentially fatal” is vague. What’s the LD50, the dosage that’s lethal to 50% of dosed individuals?
kagis
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-43126-0
Compared to monkeys, humans are somewhat more sensitive to opioids (the monkey OIRD ED50 of ~0.02 mg/kg fentanyl is similar to the fentanyl LD50 in humans)35,47,48
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/body-measurements.htm
Average weight of a man in the US is 200 lbs, so 91kg.
So that has an LD50 for an average man in the US of 1.82mg. If anything, the “potentially fatal” level is pretty generous; I’d expect that to be rather below the LD50.
And it’s presumably lower for women and children.
And I’m just using the monkey LD50, which according to the above Nature article should be higher than that of a human, if anything.
looks puzzled
I don’t understand the math here. LD50 of 1.82mg, using optimistic numbers; if anything, probably lower. And 109mg fentanyl/pill. I mean, unless you’re going to kill your customers on their first pill, something seems wrong.
I can readily believe that drug distribution networks are pushing stuff that’s jammed up into the quite-dangerous zone, but this seems like it’d be in “certain death” territory. Like, a suicide pill.
Ok I re read the article and I think the misleading part is this:
1.4 million fentanyl pills totaling 152.98 kilograms.
The total weight of the pills was ~153 kg, but that’s not all Fentanyl. The pills CONTAINED it but this doesn’t tell us the amount per pill.
Furthermore it looks like they were stamped as Oxycodone so yeah they were to be sold to current opiate users I wager
Thanks for doing the math!
Better than doing the meth!
I think addicts use higher doses since they are used to it.
50-100 times the potential lethal dose seems pretty high even for a chronic addict.
I think either there’s a mix up with the reported numbers here, or they’re reporting the weight of the whole pill, not the fentanyl in the pill.
A fentanyl pill will be mostly filler material with a little drug sprinkled in, actually that’s most pills in general. A Tylenol pill isn’t 100% Acetaminophen, it’s mostly just filler material.
So I’m willing to bet the pills way 109 milligrams each, and they’re just little tabs with like 1-10% fentanyl content.
Idk. I remember hearing that Rush Limbaugh took 100s of oxycontin per day. Tolerance builds.
Hundreds?
No one is taking hundreds of OxyContins. Tolerance builds, but you can’t become immune to the respiratory suppression effects of narcotics.
Are you sure you’re not misremembering that he Purchased hundreds of pills at a time in shady drug deals? Just because you buy a sack of drugs doesn’t mean you’re going to take them ask that day and doesn’t mean they’re all for you.
1.4 million pills is nothing. 70,000 people died of a fentanyl overdose in 2021 and they weren’t all taking a just two pills and that’s it.
https://www.addictiongroup.org/resources/fentanyl-statistics/
But sure, let’s highlight that it was a Mexican national. Let’s not talk about how most of the Fentanyl enters the U.S.
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/09/1191638114/fentanyl-smuggling-migrants-mexico-border-drugs
I don’t get what you are trying to communicate.
1.4 million pills is nothing.
If that’s nothing for you than that’s only your opinion.
But sure, let’s highlight that it was a Mexican national.
All the department of justice press releases follow the same format in relation to nationalities, if you read in the website you will find them mentioning even the state of which the person is from if he is American.
Good job not reading my links.
Sigh, good job spitting links instead of facts.
There were facts in the links you didn’t read.
I guess you are a troll, I already explained to you why they mention his nationality and that the number of pills is high in general, if you consider it insignificant, then that is only your opinion here.
You can accuse me of being a troll, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t facts in the links you didn’t read.
I’m sorry you don’t like that, but it’s still the case.
