A restaurant in rural Auburn, Maine had taken delivery of a strange package. It was a large crate employees expected to contain mugs the business had ordered. However, inside they had discovered a plastic tote with a 31 pound (14 kg) package containing some mystery substance. They called law enforcement who had then tentatively identified the mystery substance as fentanyl, one of the world's most dangerous synthetic opioid drugs. The tote had a shipping label with the address of the restaurant but the name of someone not employed there. That person was a local man named Jeremy Mercier. He was arrested and charged with a slew of drug offenses in connection with this cargo whose street value is estimated at 3 million USD.
I am typically opposed to the whole "war on drugs" but I can see how fentanyl can be something one can be criminally charged for. Not so much because it is a drug but because it can be viewed as a danger factor as it is a very powerful poison. A small fraction of a gram of that substance can kill and thus improper handling of it can be viewed as reckless endangerment.
At any rate, the drug is so powerful that, once again, millions of dollars worth of it can fit in a small bag. Clearly, if it were not for a chance encounter and limited wisdom of the would-be courier this bag would likely have hit the street as was the intent of the distribution organization. Quite likely, a few overdose deaths would have resulted, or even more than a few.
I truly wonder if the only sure way to get this menace of a drug of the streets would be, paradoxically, drug organization. Give the danger of fentanyl, no legitimate business would likely want anything to do with it and would instead offer a variety of other, far less dangerous, recreational drugs. Of course, there is no way to know if this hypothesis is viable unless we put it to a real life test.
References
Man arrested after $3 million worth of drugs shipped to Maine restaurant
Associated Press, 30 April 2023
Massive fentanyl cargo seized in Colorado in June
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