More than two pounds of fentanyl were seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents after it washed ashore in Daytona Beach, Florida, officials said Thursday.
An unsuspecting beachgoer found the drugs and contacted police, Andrew Scharnweber of CBP’s Miami sector announced on X:
A photo added in the post shows a massive plastic-wrapped brick of the dangerous white powder.
“Warning — Do not attempt to disturb or handle any suspicious packages along the shoreline. Contact local authorities immediately,” Scharnweber wrote.
No other details about the origins of the fentanyl were immediately available.
This discovery hit Florida just weeks after a massive amount of fentanyl that could have killed three million people was seized in a drug trafficking investigation that spanned multiple counties, Breitbart News reported.
The fentanyl was in multiple forms, including “bricks” similar to what was found on the beach and thousands of pressed pills that were stamped to look like prescription opioids, like oxycodone.
The dangerous synthetic opioid has greatly contributed to a “more than doubling” of overdose deaths among children ages 12 to 17 since the start of the pandemic, a recent Washington Post analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data states.
Fatal overdoses went above 112,000 deaths for all ages for the first time in U.S. history in 2023, according to NPR.
A recent report by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has validated a key claim in New York Times bestselling author Peter Schweizer’s latest book, Blood Money — that China has been subsidizing the production and export of fentanyl precursor chemicals and other synthetic narcotics.
“Specifically, there’s a Chinese gang called UBG that’s widely credited with setting up the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico and making them the kings of fentanyl,” Schweizer told Fox News in March.
“The leader of that gang is a guy named Chang An-lo who goes by the name White Wolf. It was White Wolf’s business with [a] partner who wired a $5 million if interest-free, forgivable loan to the Biden family,” the investigative journalist said. “And it was specifically designated not just for Hunter, for the family. So does Joe Biden want to have a conversation about these tough issues? Does he want to hold China to account? Absolutely not, and I’m convinced it’s because of these financial entanglements.”