In the week since the Associated Press and Albuquerque Journal separately reported on the Drug Enforcement Administration allowing certain fentanyl shipments to “walk” in order to keep building evidence for high-profile trafficking cases, a growing number of public officials have made outraged statements claiming the agency put prosecutions over public safety. At least one investigation has been opened, while another is being discussed. No matter what they find, the DEA is going to come out ahead.
On June 21, the AP and Albuquerque Journal published stories about the DEA allowing numerous shipments of fentanyl to move through New Mexico between 2023 and 2025. The investigations stemmed from a 2023 whistleblower complaint filed by DEA Special Agent David Howell, who had been part of the surveillance assigned to some of the shipments.
“We poisoned our community to make cases,” Howell told the AP. “Through our own willful blindness, we get to say, ‘We don’t really know what happened to the drugs.’ But we 100-percent got people killed.”
Among other details, the AP described how the DEA’s widely publicized all-time largest fentanyl seizure, a 2025 operation in Albuquerque that resulted in around 3 million seized pills and 16 arrests, came after the agency allowed “millions” of pills to be delivered.
On June 24, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) called for an inquiry into whether the DEA had potentially violated state law. Over the past two-and-a-half years, as the number of United States overdose deaths has gone down, Western states have split off into a separate trajectory that shows fatal overdose going up. The two states where overdose appears to be increasing the most rapidly have been Arizona and New Mexico.
“Shockingly, the federal government stood by while monitoring shipments, tallying exact pill counts, and watching as these deadly drugs hit the streets,” Lujan Grisham stated. “There are no words to describe how reckless and dangerous these decisions were. Make no mistake: the DEA knew people would die if these pills made it into New Mexico communities, and the agency let it happen anyway. The result: hundreds of New Mexican parents burying their kids. Hundreds of New Mexican kids growing up without stable parents. All while the federal government stood by.”
On June 26, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez (D) formally launched a state-level investigation, stating that it was “deeply disturbing” that DEA agents may have knowingly allowed fentanyl to hit the streets.
“If those allegations are accurate, the consequences for New Mexicans were not abstract. They were fatal,” he wrote to Lujan Grisham. “I share your outrage.”
Meanwhile, DEA Administrator Terrance C. Cole requested the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) conduct an independent investigation, stating that he believed the agency had acted lawfully.
“This request should not be interpreted as reflecting any lack of confidence in the professionalism or integrity of DEA personnel or in the investigative decisions made during this matter,” Cole wrote. “Rather, it reflects my belief that allegations of this nature—particularly those that have received widespread public attention—are best addressed through an independent objective review.”
It’s always possible that some of the shock is genuine, but it’s hard to imagine how. The agency has never really bothered to cultivate an image based on anything other than arrests and reactive enforcement and big-ticket seizures that look good in a photo. Drug interdiction has never been shown to reduce overdose. Often it increases it.
The initial news stories, the subsequent AP spin-off stories, the open letters from elected officials, the new contributions from other media outlets and other elected officials that keep appearing by the day—all of them lean really, really heavily on talking points from the DEA’s “One Pill Can Kill” campaign, more so even than is typical for public discourse around fentanyl. Because in order to be outraged at the DEA for watching any quantity of fentanyl go by without stopping it, you have to validate the myth that seizing fentanyl actually keeps it off the streets.
Gov. Lujan Grisham had specifically asked AG Torrez to prosecute anyone responsible, including federal agents, to which Torrez had responded that no one was above the law although going after federal officers may be unrealistic due to “significant legal barriers.” Administrator Cole, in his letter to the OIG, had stated that “appropriate corrective actions” would be implemented if the OIG ultimately found them necessary, even though he didn’t think that would be the case.
Either way, the DEA still wins. The takeaway is that fentanyl needs to be seized and that when it isn’t, people die. Some government entity therefore must exist to do all the fentanyl-seizing, and it’s going to be the DEA.
Top image (cropped) and inset images of 2025 Albuquerque fentanyl seizure via Drug Enforcement Administration