10/5/2022
Fentanyl packaged like candy and placed into LEGO boxes has become what federal drug agents on Tuesday called “every parent’s worst nightmare.”
The DEA and law enforcement partners announced the first significant seizure of so-called rainbow fentanyl. It happened on September 28 when agents and officers stopped a vehicle on the Manhattan side of the Lincoln Tunnel that contained 15,000 multicolored pills.
“This newly packaged poison is deliberate, it is calculated, it is treacherous deception to make Rainbow fentanyl look like candy. This is every parent’s worst nightmare,” said the Drug Enforcement Administration’s local Special Agent in Charge, Frank Tarentino.
The heavy-duty painkillers — that have been tied to a Mexican drug cartel — were found inside a rental car at Hudson Yards in Manhattan on Sept. 30, the feds said.
Thousands of multi-colored opioid pills were smuggled into New York in a Lego box, in what authorities are calling the largest fentanyl bust in the city’s history.
“Approximately 40% of the pills we analyze in our lab contain a lethal dose; and in a recent 15-week enforcement operation, DEA New York seized half a million lethal pills,” Tarentino explained.
Authorities believe drug makers are using rainbow colors and dyes as both as a branding strategy and to increase the likelihood the pills will go undetected or be mistaken for prescription drugs or candy.
New York City’s Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan said she hopes the seizure would save people from heading down “a sad path of substance use and overdose death.”
“Using happy colors to make a deadly drug seem fun and harmless is a new low, even for the Mexican cartels,” Brennan said.
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