Axios reports that the Drug Enforcement Administration seized 379 million doses of fentanyl in 2022, which included 50.6 million fentanyl-laced counterfeit prescription pain pills and more than 10,000 pounds of powdered fentanyl (which can be mixed in with cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin or used to make counterfeit prescription pain pills). As David J. Bier and I wrote recently, the vast majority of these drugs are seized at legal border crossings, mostly smuggled in by U.S. citizens working for Mexican drug cartels.

In its December 20 announcement, the DEA stated:

“In the past year, the men and women of the DEA have relentlessly worked to seize over 379 million deadly doses of fentanyl from communities across the country,” said Administrator Anne Milgram. “These seizures – enough deadly doses of fentanyl to kill every American – reflect DEA’s unwavering commitment to protect Americans and save lives, by tenaciously pursuing those responsible for the trafficking of fentanyl across the United States. DEA’s top operational priority is to defeat the two Mexican drug cartels—the Sinaloa and Jalisco (CJNG) Cartels—that are primarily responsible for the fentanyl that is killing Americans today.”

If this sounds like a broken record, it’s because law enforcement agencies have trumpeted such announcements for years. Earlier in this century, the DEA was announcing record heroin seizures. Non-medical drug users preferred prescription pain pills that made their way to the black market. But as policymakers and law enforcement punished prescribers and patients, and the DEA ratcheted down opioid manufacturing quotas, the cartels filled the void with heroin.

Law enforcement cannot avoid the “iron law of prohibition.” And lawmakers cannot repeal it. In our chapter entitled “The Overdose Crisis” in the latest edition of the Cato Handbook for Policymakers, Trevor Burrus and I explain:

The iron law of prohibition states that, all things being equal, as enforcement ramps up, smugglers prefer higher potency forms of a drug for the same reason those who sneak alcohol into a football game prefer hard alcohol in flasks to 12‐​packs of beer. The lethal logic of the iron law of prohibition means that we cannot enforce our way out of the opioid crisis. And if fentanyl smugglers become somehow easy to catch, there’s always carfentanil, which is about 100 times more potent than fentanyl and has already been showing up in America’s drug supply.

The iron law was already responsible for the rise in fentanyl smuggling before the COVID-19 pandemic. But pandemic-related disruptions in the movement of opium products and the supply of acetic anhydride needed to process heroin made fentanyl an attractive substitute for heroin and accelerated illicit fentanyl production.

Nitazenes are another category of synthetic opioids that are roughly 20 times the potency of fentanyl. They are already appearing in the toxicology studies of overdose victims in Europe and the U.S. Don’t be surprised if, in a few years, the press will sound alarms about a growing nitazene crisis. Then look for the DEA to announce record nitazene seizures. And, after nitazenes, there will be other drugs for the DEA to seize.

Reports of new and more deadly drugs, record drug seizures, and high-profile arrests will never stop—like a broken record—as long as drug prohibition continues.