As federal authorities proceed to crack down on the spread of fentanyl throughout the nation, the Drug Enforcement Administration is warning a few surge in the usage of methamphetamine, with DEA officers expressing explicit concern over meth-laced tablets being bought as medicine like Adderall to college-age adults.
“What we have seen right here not too long ago, that frightens me,” appearing DEA administrator Robert Murphy advised ABC Information’ Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas in an unique interview.
Murphy stated the DEA expects its seizures of methamphetamine to almost double this yr in comparison with final yr.
The DEA has to date seized about 70,000 kilos of the drug this yr, already practically matching the numbers reached in all of 2024, Murphy stated.
“Methamphetamine is by far essentially the most coveted drug,” Murphy stated. “That is what individuals need.”
The DEA has change into so involved in regards to the persevering with increase of methamphetamine use that it is planning to carry a press convention on Tuesday to attract consideration to it.
“Within the first six months of this yr, we have already seen greater than … what we seized final yr,” Murphy advised ABC Information. “And we challenge … we’ll double what we seized final yr.”
Performing DEA Administrator Robert Murphy speaks with Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas at DEA Headquarters in Arlington, VA on July 14, 2025.
ABC Information
Murphy stated that one of the disturbing issues about methamphetamine is that “Mexican cartels management 100% of it.”
“They management manufacturing, the smuggling, the distribution in america, and clearly the precise assortment of monies and getting the cash again into Mexico,” he stated.
And cartels are growingly more and more artistic in how they attempt to smuggle meth throughout the U.S.-Mexico border — from hiding packages of meth tablets amongst inexperienced onions to disguising meth shipments as loads of celery.
In a single location through the week of July 4, the DEA found a whole lot of bins of cucumbers that had been lined with a number of hundred kilos of meth, price practically $4 million.
And in Could, with help from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, federal authorities arrested six individuals who have been allegedly bringing liquid meth into america and driving it to Kansas by hiding it within the septic tank of a constitution bus.
Authorities turned suspicious after realizing that the bus hardly ever had any passengers.
Methamphetamine disguised as watermelons is seen on this photograph of a 2024 drug bust in California by U.S. Customs and Border Safety.
U.S. Customs and Border Safety
“They’re solely restricted by their creativeness,” Murphy stated of the smugglers. “And so they have a really broad creativeness.”
Murphy referred to as it “a cat and mouse recreation.”
He stated cartels now have a “big focus” on tablets, which he stated have much less of a stigma than injectable medicine.
Consequently, Murphy stated, turning meth into tablet kind makes it extra marketable, and subsequently extra simply bought as one thing it isn’t, corresponding to pretend Adderall or pretend MDMA — the lively ingredient in ecstasy.
“[It’s] all the medicine that which might be wished by our college-age children, and youthful,” he stated. “They’re truly getting meth, and they do not know this.”
In response to the latest statistics from the Facilities for Illness Management, drug overdose deaths in america sharply decreased by almost 27% final yr.
However whereas fentanyl and different opioid-related overdoses dropped essentially the most — by greater than a 3rd — overdoses associated to meth and different psychostimulants dropped the least — by practically 22%.
“You are shopping for a tablet off the road these days, you are taking your life in your personal palms,” Murphy warned, saying that that “nearly every part” the DEA is now seizing seems to be “pretend.”
“And as an investigator, our women and men have a tough time distinguishing between what’s actual and what’s not,” Murphy stated. “So there is no approach the common person goes to have the ability to do this.”
