The sense of smell of US Customs and Border Protection narcotics dogs remains an important tool in detecting fentanyl and other drugs.
One of America’s most precious noses is sniffing around the Mexican border.
Officials say an old-fashioned technique, a dog’s sense of smell, is key to reducing the flow of dangerous and deadly drugs like synthetic opioids.
On the US-Mexico border, Goose, a six-year-old golden retriever, searches travelers for drugs at the San Diego border crossing. The place is one of the busiest border crossings in the world. About 100,000 people arrive in the United States there every day.
Goose is one of 536 U.S. Customs and Border Protection dogs trained to sniff out drugs, weapons, cash or hidden smugglers at America’s border crossings.
Despite millions of dollars in vehicle transillumination and other technology, a dog’s sense of smell is still an important tool in uncovering fentanyl and other drugs.
Dogs have also been taught to recognize the dangerous fentanyl
Drug detection dogs are trained to detect six different drugs: marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, ecstasy and fentanyl.
The majority of fentanyl seizures occur at legal border crossings in Arizona and California, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics.
Thanks to the dogs, more than 28,000 kilograms of fentanyl have been seized since 2017.
– Every drug load, and especially fentanyl load, that we stop saves lives, says the border guard official Pete Flores for Reuters.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid and a prescription drug prescribed to cancer and other seriously ill patients in severe pain. It is also used in anesthesia. The drug is a hundred times stronger than morphine. Even two milligrams of the substance can kill.
Synthetic opioids such as fentanyl have been the main cause of the explosive increase in fatal overdoses in the United States over the past decade.
Source: Reuters