The postal shipping of illegal drugs is making an impact in Hampden County, even as the scope of the problem remains unclear.
The postal shipping of illegal drugs is making an impact in Hampden County, even as the scope of the problem remains unclear.
Last week, the Boston Globe reported that mailed packages and covert internet purchases are helping drive the importation of fentanyl, the potent synthetic painkiller responsible for an increasing percentage of opioid overdoses in Massachusetts.
Former Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem told the Globe that fentanyl is often shipped through the federal postal system, without electronic tracking information that could held law enforcement interdict drug shipments. And in 2015 the consulting firm LegalScript tested the system by making 29 purchases from illegal online pharmacies; none were intercepted before delivery.
Kayyem tells MassLive that the scale of the issue is unknown. But Hampden County District Attorney Anthony Gulluni said that it is having a local impact, with illegal packages proving a "robust line of investigation" for his office.
"It's all kinds of stuff," Gulluni said. "It's heroin, it's cocaine, it's all kind of contraband."
Kayyem said that while there are stories from across the country of opioids being illegally imported by mail, there is no clear evidence of how much fentanyl is trafficked this way.
"There's definitely sufficient anecdotal evidence," Kayyem said. "In particular China. But I don't think there is specific strong data that says we can quantify this much is coming from here."
Among those identified cases are two Utah boys who died from a synthetic opioid purchased over the internet; a STAT News investigation which examined a fentanyl-by-mail ring in Lubbock, Texas; and an Associated Press report on Chinese companies shipping the potent opioid carfentanil into the U.S. by post.
One problem, Kayyem said, is that the federal postal system does not maintain an electronic database of basic tracking information for foreign packages, like the name of the sender, the contents of the package or its return address. That information is recorded on paper, neutering its usefulness as an investigative tool for law enforcement seeking to investigate or sanction shippers of contraband.
"It's the most basic thing and people are shocked we don't have it now," Kayyem said. "Because it's not required to be done electronically, we can have no advance warning."
The group behind the recent focus on this issue is Americans for Securing All Packages, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that has assembled a team of influential former officials and launched a public relations campaign to promote awareness of the problem. Kayyem, the main source for the Globe's story, is a paid senior advisor for the group, as is former Homeland Security Sec. Tom Ridge, who penned a USA Today op/ed on the issue last September.
While drug trafficking has driven the recent headlines, ASAP is also focused on terrorism-related threats and intellectual property violations, and has backing from a range of companies with stakes in those issues, from music publishers to pharmaceuticals to private shipping firms.
It was those latter express shipping companies that drew the attention of CNBC when the group launched last fall. CNBC took a skeptical look at the organization's funding and found that one of ASAP's core issues - requiring foreign and federal postal services to meet the same tracking standards as private carriers - has been the subject of lobbying by UPS, one of ASAP's backers.
In 2002, as part of a post 9/11 trade bill, Congress required private shipping companies to electronically track foreign package information, while giving the postal service leeway in determining whether to adopt the same regulations. According to ASAP, it hasn't; tracking information is written by hand and is not available to law enforcement in a centralized database.
Whether ASAP's motivations are national security, addiction prevention, shipping industry politics or some combination of the above, the problem the group has identified is real - and is having a local impact, Gulluni said.
"A lot of this stuff is coming unchecked," Gulluni said. "Sometimes there are some screening processes like dog sniffs that help, but a lot of stuff gets delivered with any precautions."
In late November, the DA's office, the Springfield Police Department, the Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security led a joint raid on an alleged drug-by-mail ring that was importing more than 20 kilograms of cocaine per month from Puerto Rico.
Authorities seized four kilograms of cocaine and $50,000 in their raid, and charged four people with cocaine trafficking and conspiracy to violate drug laws.
The DA's office has tightened its relationship with federal homeland security and postal authorities, Gulluni said. He supports Democratic Rep. Richard Neal's proposed bill to require the collection of electronic tracking information, saying it could help both national and local law enforcement investigate illegal packages.
Federal agencies have also registered concerns with the importatation of contraband.
A July intelligence brief from the Drug Enforcement Agency said that fentanyl is often shipped by freight from China, forwarded through multiple couriers and often with missing or inaccurate package information. U.S. Customs and Border Protection have said that illegal shipments pose a "significant risk" to national security, according to a USPS Office of the Inspector General memorandum.
One-thousand and five people died from opioids from January to September 2016, excluding suicides, according to figures released by the state's Department of Public Health in November. That rate exceeds the first nine months of 2015.
In all, 1,574 people died from opioid overdoses in 2015.
And fentanyl is playing a larger role in the crisis. Deaths attributable to heroin have dropped, while 74 percent of overdose deaths with completed toxicology screens in the year's third quarter showed the detection of fentanyl -- up from 66 percent in the second quarter of this year.
While fentanyl was originally designed as a medical drug when it was developed in the 1950s, it has since become a popular additive to street heroin due to its cheapness and potency.
Fentanyl manufactured in China often finds its way to Western Mass. through Mexican drug operations who ship the product to New York, where street-ready drugs are driven up I-95 toward urban centers like Springfield and Holyoke, Gulluni told MassLive in August.
