4 ms·

Chinese fentanyl sellers, USPS ‘virtually guaranteed’ route to not get caught

2 points by thread_id 9y ago

aurizon 9y ago
The simple truth behind this is the fact that 2-3 grams of pure fentanyl painted on a card with a little water and dried will fit in a standard business envelope and be virtually non detectable. It can also be sent as powder in plastic bags?? Since a dose is 1/3 of a milligram of pure drug this is 6000-9000 doses. This traffic is made of many of these small letters, that look like simple mail. Detection? Put the mail in standard cartons, then heat them with - I would suggest an in-line microwave oven, mounted to heat all envelopes with some sort of detector, mass spec or trained dog/rat etc sample the air they give off when a 5 pound vacuum is drawn on a box of letters. This will ID one box, and all those letters can be sniffed in detail. Frequency of the microwave? Some lab tests will show what frequency excites Fentantyl to give off fumes. This sort of setup needs to be tested first to determine if it is practical. The boxes can also be screen for any metal shielding, like aluminium foil, which is easily detectable by a radar like microwave beam of another frequency. I think a determined experimental RF lab would be able to find some sort of method?? Of course, the smugglers will engage in counter methods, once a method is found to catch the smuggled drugs. It can be used on many other drugs as well,.
thread_id 9y ago
@aurizon. That's a very intresting idea. My thought on this was to use data from opioid overdoses, opioid deaths, opioid arrests to identify goegraphic clusters. Then isolate USPS data for parcel delivery from China to an address that lies within the circumference of the geographic clusters. Filter on optimizing factors and features - higher volumes and occupants of those addresses that are known to be associated to illegal drugs (prior arrests etc.). Then investigate those packages.

4 ms·

Chinese fentanyl sellers, USPS ‘virtually guaranteed’ route to not get caught

2 points by thread_id 9y ago

aurizon 9y ago
The simple truth behind this is the fact that 2-3 grams of pure fentanyl painted on a card with a little water and dried will fit in a standard business envelope and be virtually non detectable. It can also be sent as powder in plastic bags?? Since a dose is 1/3 of a milligram of pure drug this is 6000-9000 doses. This traffic is made of many of these small letters, that look like simple mail. Detection? Put the mail in standard cartons, then heat them with - I would suggest an in-line microwave oven, mounted to heat all envelopes with some sort of detector, mass spec or trained dog/rat etc sample the air they give off when a 5 pound vacuum is drawn on a box of letters. This will ID one box, and all those letters can be sniffed in detail. Frequency of the microwave? Some lab tests will show what frequency excites Fentantyl to give off fumes. This sort of setup needs to be tested first to determine if it is practical. The boxes can also be screen for any metal shielding, like aluminium foil, which is easily detectable by a radar like microwave beam of another frequency. I think a determined experimental RF lab would be able to find some sort of method?? Of course, the smugglers will engage in counter methods, once a method is found to catch the smuggled drugs. It can be used on many other drugs as well,.
thread_id 9y ago
@aurizon. That's a very intresting idea. My thought on this was to use data from opioid overdoses, opioid deaths, opioid arrests to identify goegraphic clusters. Then isolate USPS data for parcel delivery from China to an address that lies within the circumference of the geographic clusters. Filter on optimizing factors and features - higher volumes and occupants of those addresses that are known to be associated to illegal drugs (prior arrests etc.). Then investigate those packages.