According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CPB), in the six months from October 2017 through March of 2018, 934 pounds of narcotics were seized coming into the U.S. from overseas. The U.S. has more than 300 ports of entry and receives about 1.3 million packages a day from outside the country, and it’s only possible to inspect a fraction of them.
When packages arrive without any sort of advance data, CPB officers are forced to process them manually, which generally consists of digging through bags or bins full of parcels. The process is slowly improving, however. At the United States Postal Service facility at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, CPB agents now have sophisticated scanning technology and drug sniffing dogs to aid in their inspections.
In June 2018, the Securing the International Mail Against Opioids Act was passed by the House of Representatives. The act seeks to implement tracking data – called advanced electronic data or AED – that would flag packages susceptible to include synthetic opioids. 100 percent of packages would be required to relay tracking data by December 2020, and if one were to arrive with no data, it would be prevented from moving on to its next destination until examined by law enforcement.
According to congressional investigators, China in particular has been taking advantage of this lack of tracking data to ship fentanyl to the U.S. In 2017, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations sent investigators posing as first-time buyers to make inquiries to websites selling fentanyl and other opioids from China. After arranging payment, they were able to obtain financial information from six different online opioid dealers. They found transactions by 300 people in 43 states, amounting to $230,000. The estimated street value of these drugs was about $766 million.
Drug users in the United States often view purchasing drugs from overseas via the internet as safer than buying locally. Criminal activity is more difficult to trace on the dark web, and you avoid the risk of meeting up with drug dealers on shady street corners. Also, many of these online sellers allow for customer feedback, so they can be fairly sure based on reports of other customers that the product they’re buying is legitimate.
The U.S. Postal Service and State Department have voiced concerns about the act, saying that some countries are simply not technologically advanced enough to comply. The U.S. would have to start blocking entry of any packages from certain countries. They estimate that it would cost the postal service between $1.2 and $4.8 billion over ten years.
Because of laws passed after 9/11, United Parcel Service and Federal Express are already required to keep tracking data, but the postal service was exempt due to the sheer amount of mail it processes every day.
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