Nebraska police seized enough fentanyl to kill 26,000,000 people

A semi-truck driving on the shoulder of Route I-80 is what got the Nebraska state troopers’ attention. But the seemingly routine traffic stop last month led to one of the largest seizures of fentanyl in the United States: 118 pounds of the super-potent synthetic opioid — stashed in a secret compartment in about 46 foil-wrapped packets.

It’s the second large fentanyl seizure in Nebraska in 8 months.

Troopers who pulled over the truck in April, driven by two New Jersey men Felipe Genao-Minaya and Nelson Nunez, originally thought the haul to be 73 pounds of cocaine and 44 pounds of fentanyl, but the entire cache turned out to be all fentanyl, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts revealed Thursday.

Authorities held off on testing the drugs initially, they said, due to the “dangerous nature of the substance.”

That small and very portable cargo on the roadside in Nebraska was enough to kill more than 26 million people, according to estimates by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The math goes something like this: Fentanyl is prescribed by the millionth of a gram, and it's fatal at doses of about 2 milligrams. There are roughly 450,000 milligrams per pound. So the 118 pounds seized in Nebraska amounts to 53.1 million mgs, which could cause about 26.5 million overdoses.

The main sources of fentanyl entering the U.S. are labs in China — with reports of kilo-size packages coming in through the U.S. mail — and Mexico.

Read: How fentanyl gets from China to the U.S.

Cited in a high percentage of opioid overdose deaths, fentanyl is about 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin, according to the DEA, and about 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine.

“More than 100 people die every day in the United States from an opioid overdose,” Nebraska State Patrol Superintendent Colonel John Bolduc said in a statement. “Without question, seizures like this save thousands of lives.”

Drug overdoses are at unprecedented levels in the United States, and those numbers are only climbing — thanks, in large part, to fentanyl. Fentanyl accounted for just under 15 percent of all opioid-linked overdoses in 2010, but as of 2016, it was found in about 45 percent of all opioid-related overdoses, a recent study in JAMA found.

Read: Overdoses are being treated like murders more than ever

Those numbers are also likely underestimates of the true scope of the death wrought by the opioid crisis, since local practices around filling out death certificates vary across the country.

Nebraska authorities made another big fentanyl bust last October: They seized 33 pounds from a man at an Omaha Amtrak train station. Officials say 27-year-old Edgar Navarro-Aguire was carrying the fentanyl when he was arrested at the station, believed to be transporting the opioid from California to New York and New Jersey.

Cover image: Bags of heroin, some laced with fentanyl, are displayed before a press conference regarding a major drug bust, at the office of the New York Attorney General, September 23, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)