Скачать или смотреть Fox29 San Antonio with DEA's Dante Sorianello and Derek Maltz

Fox 29 SAN ANTONIO — Drug overdose deaths have soared during Covid-19 to the highest number ever recorded in a 12-month period according to the CDC, but the DEA says the rising number of deaths shows that America is facing more than just an opioid crisis brought on by greed.

“They can make more money off a kilo of fentanyl than they can off a kilo of heroin, so these folks, they don't care what harm they do to anybody. They are looking to make money, that's what it's all about,” said Dante Sorianello, the assistant special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in the San Antonio district.

The DEA says a new crisis has emerged brought on by illegal prescription meds and by illegal drugs used to fake people into thinking they’re getting the real thing. Meth and fentanyl are used to produce the knock offs and have proven to be deadly. Based on a study by the Journal of the American Medical Association, both are cheap, abundant, and flooding the U.S.