Whistleblower: DEA Allowed Millions of Fentanyl Pills onto the Streets
The Facts
- The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) whistleblower David Howell held his first televised interview with CBS News on Thursday, in which he accused the federal law enforcement arm of allowing millions of fentanyl pills onto the streets.
- Howell told CBS that the DEA let the drugs "walk," meaning enter illegal circulation, as part of a controversial tactic investigators use to track drug traffickers by allowing them to distribute their product and following the trail.
- Nevertheless, Howell said the practice did more harm than good, providing an anecdote of how the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Mexico chastised Howell and his team following a drug bust that captured between 6,000 and 7,000 fentanyl pills.
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The Spin
Establishment-critical narrative
The DEA fundamentally betrayed its promise to the American people. Instead of stopping drugs wherever it finds them, they prefer to play clever and allow millions of deadly pills to flood U.S. streets in hopes of catching a big sting. This policy, however, puts ordinary U.S. citizens at mortal risk amid the fallout of a devastating opioid epidemic.
Pro-establishment narrative
Snatching a couple of pills here and there while a cartel pipeline continues unabated is bad policy. The real target is dismantling the whole network to end the drug trafficking operation in its entirety. That is why DEA agents on the ground made an informed judgment to let the drugs "walk," so they could trace the supply back to those pulling the strings.
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