Drug Overdose Deaths

The Streets Of Major U.S. Cities Are Being Flooded With Far More Drugs Than Ever Before

An endless tsunami of illegal drugs is turning the streets of our major cities into desolate wastelands, and yet our politicians seem powerless to do anything about it.  In fact, in some of our biggest cities the politicians actually don’t seem interested in doing anything about it.  As I will discuss below, open air drug markets are operating freely right in the heart of New York City at this moment.  Dealers and addicts go about their business without the slightest fear that the police will do anything.  Meanwhile, the national death toll just continues to rise.  An all-time record 93,000 Americans died as a result of a drug overdose last year.  That was an increase of nearly 30 percent from the year before, and authorities are already warning that there will be another huge jump when the final numbers for 2021 come in.

Federal law enforcement authorities are trying to do what they can, but they know that they are fighting a losing battle.  On Thursday, they announced that they just seized 1.8 million counterfeit pills, but in the big picture that is only a drop in the bucket.

Right now, federal officials are warning that more fake medications are circulating on our streets than we have ever seen before, and a very large proportion of them contain fentanyl.  According to the DEA, the number of fentanyl-laced counterfeit pills that they have been able to intercept has risen by almost 430 percent since 2019…

Counterfeit pills are more lethal than ever before. The number of DEA-seized counterfeit pills with fentanyl has jumped nearly 430 percent since 2019. DEA lab testing reveals that 2 out of every 5 pills with fentanyl contain a potentially lethal dose.

This is one of the biggest reasons why vast hordes of mindless addicts now endlessly roam the streets of our major cities like zombies.

For these addicts, their primary goal in life is always the next fix, and what most Americans don’t realize is that “most of the counterfeit pills coming into the United States are produced in Mexico and China”…

“Drug traffickers, both here and abroad, are increasingly using counterfeit pills to package and distribute the poison that illicit fentanyl is,” said Thomas Hodnett, acting special agent in charge of the DEA’s Philadelphia Division. Law enforcement officials say most of the counterfeit pills coming into the United States are produced in Mexico and China.

You see, the truth is that the drug war never actually ended, and it is being won by the Mexican drug cartels and the Chinese.

And thanks to social media, counterfeit pills are now easier to distribute than ever before…

The DEA said the counterfeit pills — made to look like real opioid medications such as oxycodone, Percocet or Adderall — are sold on the street by dealers or online, including through social media platforms.

“If you have a smartphone and you’re sitting on the sofa at home … your drug dealer is right there in your hands,” DEA spokesperson Anne Edgecomb said in an interview with NPR.

Of course dealers are constantly having to search for new customers because so many of their existing customers end up dying.

Fentanyl is extremely potent, and it only takes a couple of milligrams to kill you…

Mexican drug cartels increasingly are manufacturing the pills with fentanyl, which is at least 30 times more potent than heroin and is fatal in doses of as little as two milligrams.

“It’s everywhere,” says Robert Bell, head of the DEA’s Chicago field division. “They’re available in street deals, for purchase online, in schools. It’s very scary.”

This is a major national security crisis, because it is absolutely devastating communities all across the nation.

But as I stated at the top of the article, many of our politicians don’t even seem interested in finding a solution.

In New York City, the Garment District has become a horrifying drug-infested cesspool…

The block bordered by 35th and 36th streets, and Seventh and Eighth Avenues, is “littered with used needles, broken glass crack pipes, trash, urine, and feces” as junkies shoot up and dealers brazenly sell drugs, lamented one neighbor on social media. “I’ve personally seen dozens of deals go down. I’ve seen a person OD and nearly die.”

During a single walk around the block last week, The Post witnessed three different people injecting needles in their wrists or fingers in the middle of the afternoon. Each addict sat on the sidewalk or in empty storefronts. Dozens of other junkies sat or lay nearly comatose, many of the men shirtless, on the same block.

But instead of doing something about it, the politicians in New York have apparently told the police “to let junkies roam free”…

The NYPD appears to have only a token presence. Two cops stood on Eighth Avenue between 35th and 36th, leaning up against a police van while staring into their phones, as illicit activities swirled around them.

But cops have been “effectively ordered” by city and state leaders to let junkies roam free, said Manny Gomez, a former NYPD sergeant and FBI special agent who now heads MG Security Services.

Of course whenever you have large numbers of addicts concentrated in one location you are going to see a spike in crime, and that is precisely what we are witnessing in the Garment District…

Crime in the Midtown South Precinct, which includes the Garment District, is up 41 percent this year through Sept. 19 compared to the same period in 2020, according to NYPD crime data.

The most eye-popping spikes are in the number of robberies – which increased 189 percent from 97 to 280 – and felony assaults – which increased 151 percent from 131 to 329.

Sadly, New York is far from alone.  For a very long time I have been warning that major cities all over America were being transformed into crime-ridden, drug-infested hellholes, and it is getting worse with each passing year.

It has been estimated that approximately 23 million Americans are addicted to drugs, but nobody knows the real number.  It isn’t as if there is any sort of a “drug census” that would give us a more accurate count.

But what we do know is that the problem is bigger than it has ever been in our entire history.

We have raised entire generations of Americans to believe that their only purpose in life is to serve our soulless, corrupt system.  Of course millions of people do eagerly get on the hamster wheel and try to grab as much money and stuff as they can because they think that they will eventually achieve fulfillment that way.  But millions of others quickly realize that the game is meaningless and they search out other ways to make themselves happy.  A lot of drug addicts didn’t start out as bad people, but their search for happiness ended up taking them down some paths that they never should have gone down.

If you are searching for meaning in life, our society doesn’t have any answers for you.  Those that run things just want to control and manipulate you as they make themselves even richer and more powerful.

It is imperative that we all learn to think for ourselves, because many of those that don’t learn to think for themselves end up being stuck in their little game for their entire lives.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book I have written five other books that are available on Amazon.com including  “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, “Get Prepared Now”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.  During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

They Warned Us That There Would Be A Collapse Of Civilization In Our Generation, And They Were Right

Even some of our brightest scientific minds are projecting that there is absolutely no positive future for our civilization if we stay on our current course.  Perhaps one of the reasons why our society has become so obsessed with short-term results is because most of us can’t bear to think about the long-term consequences of our actions.  I have a website that focuses on “economic collapse”, but it isn’t just the economy that is headed for catastrophe.  Virtually every aspect of our society is coming apart at the seams all around us, and the era that we are moving into will be more nightmarish than most people would dare to imagine.  But our political leaders continue to insist that everything is going to work out just fine somehow, and most people choose to believe them.

This week, an old MIT study from 1972 that projected that our civilization will collapse at some point during the 21st century made headlines on several major news sites…

In 1972, a team of MIT scientists got together to study the risks of civilizational collapse. Their system dynamics model published by the Club of Rome identified impending ‘limits to growth’ (LtG) that meant industrial civilization was on track to collapse sometime within the 21st century, due to overexploitation of planetary resources.

In particular, the study identified a period of time “around 2040” when societal collapse would be very likely…

The study was published in the Yale Journal of Industrial Ecology in November 2020 and is available on the KPMG website. It concludes that the current business-as-usual trajectory of global civilization is heading toward the terminal decline of economic growth within the coming decade—and at worst, could trigger societal collapse by around 2040.

Of course events are not going to transpire exactly as they foresaw, but as far as the big picture is concerned they were right on the money.

Our society is now in the process of collapsing all around us, and you can see evidence of this everywhere that you look.

This week, civil unrest is causing widespread chaos in the streets in Cuba, South Africa, Beirut and Paris.  We have entered a period of time when it seems like people are perpetually angry, and the wild scenes that are playing out around the globe are absolutely shocking.

Here in the United States, we are in the midst of a crazy crime wave.  Murder rates in our major cities rose by an average of 30 percent in 2020, and they are up another 24 percent so far in 2021.  Extreme violence has become a way of life in many of our largest metropolitan areas, and this is particularly true in the city of Chicago…

A Chicago rapper died after suffering as many as 64 bullet wounds to his head and other parts of his body in what police are calling an ambush shooting just as he was released from jail.

Londre Sylvester, 31, who is known by his stage name KTS Dre, was one of three people who were shot just outside Cook County Jail in the Little Village section of Chicago on Saturday.

Chicago police seem powerless to stop the endless violence, but of course the same could be said about many other police departments around the country.

The streets of our biggest cities are becoming war zones, and what we have experienced so far is just the beginning.

Meanwhile, we are dealing with the worst epidemic of illegal drugs in our history.  If you can believe it, drug overdose deaths were up nearly 30 percent last year…

Drug-overdose deaths in the U.S. surged nearly 30% in 2020, the tragic result of a deadlier supply and the destabilizing effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to preliminary federal data and public health officials.

The estimated 93,331 deaths from drug overdoses last year, a record high, represent the sharpest annual increase in at least three decades, and compare with an estimated toll of 72,151 deaths in 2019, according to provisional overdose-drug data released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Drug overdose deaths were already at an all-time high coming into 2020.

So for the number of deaths to rise 30 percent above that level in just one year is really, really tragic.

At the same time, our system of public education continues to rapidly deteriorate.

Earlier today, I was shocked to learn that 41 percent of all high school students in Baltimore have a grade point average that is below 1.0…

Project Baltimore obtained a chart assembled by Baltimore City Schools. The chart shows the average GPA for every high school grade in the city – freshman through senior. In the first three quarters of this past school year, according to the chart, 41% of all Baltimore City high school students, earned below a 1.0 grade point average. In other words, nearly half of the 20,500 public high school students in Baltimore earned less than a D average.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Patterson. “If almost half of our kids are failing, what options do they have after high school? This is really disheartening. It’s sad to see this.”

I don’t just want to single out Baltimore, because that isn’t fair.

All across this once great country of ours, public schools are completely and utterly failing our kids.  The vast majority of our high school graduates cannot read, write or speak coherently, and that simply should not be happening in the wealthiest nation on the entire planet.

Switching gears, authorities up in Canada are dealing with a different form of social decay.  For years, I have been warning that Christians in the western world would soon face the same sort of extreme persecution that Christians in other parts of the globe are forced to endure, and now it is starting to happen.

In recent weeks, individuals that are apparently motivated by a deep hatred for Christians have been setting churches on fire all over Canada…

Terrorists are attacking and burning down churches across Canada with impunity.

It’s a reality most Canadians only thought possible for Middle Eastern countries like Syria, where ISIS has bombarded and razed dozens of Christian heritage sites in the name of Islam.

We haven’t seen anything quite like this before.  According to Keean Bexte, a total of 45 Canadian churches have been burned just since the beginning of June…

The Counter Signal has kept a close eye on these terrorist attacks, reporting on the scene just hours after a fire in a refugee church.

Our information shows that since June, there have been 45 attacks on Christian and mainly Roman Catholic congregations. Of those, 17 of them have been scorched or burnt to a crisp in suspicious circumstances.

The corporate media should accept responsibility for their role in provoking these attacks.

For years, the corporate media has been relentlessly demonizing conservative Christians, and churches are the most visible symbols of conservative Christian culture in our society.

As the corporate media continues to blame conservative Christians for society’s ills, it is inevitable that there will be more attacks on churches in the future.

But of course there will be more violence everywhere around us as our society continues to steadily unravel.

I have never seen as much anger, frustration and hate as I am seeing right now, and there is no future for a society in which virtually everyone is filled with rage.

The years ahead are going to be extremely chaotic, and I would suggest that you plan accordingly.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.  During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

America’s Worst Drug Crisis Ever Is Causing The Streets Of Many U.S. Cities To Look Like A “Zombie Apocalypse” Has Arrived

America has been battling illegal street drugs for decades, but we have never seen anything like this.  When the COVID pandemic hit the U.S., illegal drug use dramatically surged, and that has carried over into 2021.  As I discussed a few days ago, the amount of meth that CBP agents have seized is up 9 percent so far in fiscal year 2021 and the amount of cocaine that CBP agents have seized is up 64 percent so far in fiscal year 2021.  But the largest increase has been in fentanyl traffic.  At this point, CBP agents have seized “more than 4,900 lbs of fentanyl during the first five months of FY21, already surpassing the total for all of FY20”.

The big drug cartels absolutely love fentanyl for a couple of reasons.

First of all, it is extremely inexpensive to make, and it is very easy to move it long distances.

Secondly, it is exceedingly addictive, and so customers constantly come back for more.

But the only problem is that many of those customers don’t last too long.  Tens of thousands of Americans are dropping dead from fentanyl overdoses, and this has become a major national crisis.

Once again tonight, vast hordes of addicts will congregate in urban areas where they know they will be able to score some fentanyl.  One of those areas is Kensington Avenue in northeast Philadelphia…

The video looks like a scene from an apocalyptic movie – dozens of disheveled people shivering in the middle of a winter night as they camp out around a trash bin on fire among a street strewn with litter.

But the footage isn’t a Hollywood production but a candid snapshot of Kensington Avenue in northeast Philadelphia – an area that has been likened to the infamous Skid Row section of Los Angeles.

The neighborhood has previously been dubbed the ‘East Coast’s largest open-air drug market’ by DEA officials, according to the New York Times.

You can see footage of Kensington Avenue at night right here.  If you didn’t know better, you would probably be tempted to think that it was pulled right out of a post-apocalyptic horror film.

On Kensington Avenue, addicts can purchase a bag of fentanyl-laced heroin for as little as five dollars…

The Kensington section of Philadelphia, where anyone can buy a lethal dose of fentanyl-laced heroin for $5 a bag, has been known locally as the ‘ground zero’ of America’s opioid epidemic, Philadelphia Magazine reported.

It is not uncommon for locals who pass by the area to notice men lying motionless on the sidewalk.

Syringes and needles are also frequently seen out and used in plain sight.

Sometimes the men that are lying motionless on the sidewalk never get up, and that is because they have dropped dead from an overdose.

Of course scenes like this play out on a nightly basis all over America.  At this point, synthetic opioids such as fentanyl have become the leading cause of overdose deaths in the United States…

In 2016, synthetic opioids, primarily illegal fentanyl, passed prescription opioids as the most common drugs involved in overdose deaths in the United States, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

It is incredibly easy to overdose on fentanyl.  In fact, an amount of fentanyl equivalent to “two grains of salt” is apparently enough to put you in the grave…

Some families are facing a fentanyl crisis and law enforcement is sounding the alarm. The tasteless, odorless drug is driving up the number of fatal overdoses.

People who are battling a substance use disorder are being fooled by fentanyl. Lisa Smittcamp, the District Attorney in Fresno County, California, says the amount it takes to overdose is about the size of two grains of salt.

For a number of years, this was primarily a problem in the eastern half of the nation, but that has all changed.

Fentanyl use is now spreading like wildfire in the western half of the country, and that spike is pushing the overall death toll dramatically higher.  The following comes from NPR…

The spike in fentanyl deaths in the West contributed to a record number of fatal overdoses last year, with roughly 72,000 Americans dead.

“It’s just getting worse, and it’s killing too many people,” said Matthew Donahue, deputy chief of operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Sadly, the final number for 2021 is expected to be even higher.

These are deaths that do not need to happen, but Americans don’t seem to be getting the message that fentanyl use is extremely dangerous.

In fact, since the beginning of the pandemic the number of Americans testing positive for fentanyl use has absolutely skyrocketed…

Use of methamphetamine and fentanyl shot up after the pandemic hit the U.S. in March 2020, with a particularly sharp spike for the latter, according to a new report by drug testing company Millennium Health.

The adjusted positivity rate of urine drug screens was up 78% for fentanyl and 29% for methamphetamine during the first 9 months of the pandemic compared with the same period in 2019, according to the report. While cocaine and heroin saw small increases initially, both fell below pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2020.

This is yet another example of how the fabric of our society is unraveling all around us, and it is only going to get worse.

For years, much of the fentanyl being used in the U.S. was coming in from China, but then international pressure forced the Chinese to ban the sale of fentanyl.

Unfortunately, since that time vendors in China have found ways around that ban…

Under international pressure, China’s government banned the production and sale of fentanyl and many of its variants in May 2019, resulting in a significant reduction in the country’s illicit fentanyl trade.

But more than a year later, Chinese vendors have tapped into online networks to brazenly market fentanyl analogs and the precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl, and ship them directly to customers in the U.S. and Europe as well as to Mexican cartels, according to an NPR investigation and research from the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, or C4ADS, a nonprofit data analysis group.

This is one of the reasons why we need strong security on our southern border.

Right now the Mexican cartels are flooding our streets with fentanyl, and the new administration does not seem too concerned about doing anything to stop this from happening.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.  During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.