近距离内射合集

Then-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in May 2025 announced what she described as the largest fentanyl bust in U.S. history, including 2.7 million opioid pills seized in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

Despite this and other large drug seizures, New Mexico in 2025 experienced the nation's largest increase in drug overdose deaths, largely driven by fentanyl, often in combination with other drugs.

In Sandoval County, for instance, overdose deaths increased 74% in 2025 from the prior year, according to the state Department of Health.

Drug overdose deaths nationwide declined 14.4% in the 12 months ending in January, but increased 22.7% in New Mexico in the same period, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Reasons often cited for New Mexico's outlier status include the state's 180-mile border with Mexico, which has made Albuquerque a distribution hub for Mexican cartels that move large quantities of fentanyl into the U.S.

But new reports have raised questions about the practices of federal investigators that may have contributed to high rates of overdose deaths.

Reports published last week by the Journal revealed that Albuquerque-based Drug Enforcement Administration agents chose not to seize large fentanyl shipments from 2023 to 2025 to allow investigators to build criminal cases into drug trafficking organizations.

The reports are based in part on a whistleblower complaint filed by David Howell, a 19-year DEA agent, who alleged that a DEA practice called fentanyl "walking" allowed at least 300,000 fentanyl pills to enter the New Mexico illegal drug market.

The allegations have evoked outrage by elected officials in New Mexico, including Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who on Monday said she will consider legal actions against the federal government and seek a meeting with the White House.

New Mexico Attorney General Ra煤l Torrez on Friday committed to an 鈥渁ggressive鈥� inquiry into the allegations.

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller called the DEA practice an "immoral decision" and questioned whether the agency's practice contributed to New Mexico's high rate of fentanyl overdoses from 2023 to 2025.

"One pill can kill," Keller said at a June 24 news conference. "Statistically, if there are 300,000 extra pills, hundreds of people died because of this policy."

Fentanyl's effects

Keller and other city officials said that the arrival of fentanyl supercharged New Mexico's age-old substance abuse crisis.

"Fentanyl is the cheapest, most deadly, most available drug that's ever been invented," Keller said. Because of its low cost, fentanyl lowered the entry cost for opioid abuse and addiction, he said.

"You are either dead or addicted after one pill, but it only costs you $1," Keller said.

Raul Bujanda, the city's public safety director, said fentanyl "drastically" altered New Mexico's substance abuse problem "because its addictive nature is just horrific. Now you have a derivative of heroin that's super-cheap and even more addictive."

Calculating the public cost of the fentanyl crisis is difficult because it contributes to many social ills such as crime, homelessness and mental illness.

"Once you're addicted, you can't hold a job," said Bujanda, who retired as special agent in charge of the FBI's New Mexico office in May 2025. Many turn to panhandling or crimes to raise the small amounts of cash needed to buy fentanyl.

A June 18 Legislative Finance Committee report cites the recent spike in overdose deaths as a key reason for the state's costly investment in behavioral health.

New Mexico has spent more than $843 million since 2022 rebuilding its behavioral health system, in part to address the need for treatment among young people struggling with addiction, the report said.

Long history

A powerful, synthetic cousin of heroin, fentanyl began appearing in New Mexico's illegal drug market some 20 years ago and became the dominant street drug by 2018, an Albuquerque rehabilitation professional said.

"Long before anyone called it a fentanyl crisis, it was a crisis," said Jeff Holland, executive director of Endorphin Power Company, an Albuquerque nonprofit that serves people struggling with addiction.

Fentanyl in its raw, powdered form is up to 100 times more potent than morphine or heroin, making it easy to transport and smuggle. A small quantity of raw fentanyl can be made into thousands of pills that can be smoked or ingested.

"Most people are smoking it," Holland said. "It's way too powerful for most people to shoot up." People who shunned injection drugs like heroin may find fentanyl more attractive, he said.

Contributing to the lethality of fentanyl is the lack of expertise among illegal chemists who press powdered fentanyl into pills.

"There's no consistency," he said. Some pills contain more fentanyl than others. "Pressing the pills is just like bathtub gin to a certain degree."

A short-acting opioid, fentanyl causes a person to begin withdrawal more quickly than heroin, driving demand for pills that range in price from $1 to $5 each, Holland said.

Fentanyl "has a shorter half-life," he said. "It's more addictive in the sense that it doesn't keep you high as long. You start getting really sick much quicker."

Largest killer

Fentanyl is the largest contributor to fatal overdoses nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Drug overdose deaths in New Mexico have doubled in less than a decade, rising from 493 in 2017 to 989 in the 12 months ending in January, the CDC estimates. Drug overdose deaths have yet to surpass the record 1,052 in 2021, which was a sharp increase from 784 in 2020.

Overdose deaths in New Mexico declined slightly in 2024, then spiked to 989 deaths in the 12 months ending in January 鈥� a 22.7% increase over the preceding 12 months, the CDC reported.

No region of the state has been immune to the ravages of fentanyl. Hot spots move around the state from year to year.

The New Mexico Department of Health performs "spike actions" in locations that show a steep rise in overdose deaths, providing alerts to medical personnel and distributing naloxone, a drug that can counteract an opioid overdose.

In September, the agency issued an alert for Rio Arriba, Santa Fe and Taos counties after year-over-year overdose deaths in 2025 increased 65% or more in those northern New Mexico counties.

"These events are primarily driven by opioids, with fentanyl use linked to most of the fatalities," the alert said. It warned that tests found unusually high concentrations of fentanyl in samples tested in those counties.

"While typical samples contain approximately 1% fentanyl, recently identified samples have contained up to 20% fentanyl," the alert said. "Providers across New Mexico should be aware that these trends could spread to other areas of the state."

Andrew Gans, the agency's communicable disease bureau chief, said the agency now is ramping up a spike action in Sandoval County, where the number of overdose deaths increased from 27 in 2024 to 47 in 2025. The agency's efforts are centered in Rio Rancho, the county's largest city.

A spike in overdose deaths can result from a new source of supply entering a community that contains higher levels of fentanyl or "adulterants" like medetomidine, a potent sedative, Gans said.

The CDC issued an alert in April warning that medetomidine has been found in the U.S. illegal drug supply, primarily in fentanyl products, and can cause severe withdrawal symptoms.

Olivier Uyttebrouck covers the court system. You can reach him at olivier@abqjournal.com.