PHOENIX —

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials announced Thursday their biggest fentanyl bust ever, saying they captured nearly 254 pounds of the deadly synthetic opioid from a load of Mexican produce heading into Arizona.

The drug was found hidden Saturday morning inside a tractor-trailer after a scan during secondary inspection indicated something else was in the load, Nogales CBP Port Director Michael Humphries said.

The quantity of fentanyl, which is 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine, had the potential to kill nearly 56 million people, based on previously reported numbers from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Ingesting as little as 2 milligrams of fentanyl, equivalent to a few grains of table salt, can be lethal, according to the DEA.

Agents also seized a much smaller number of fentanyl pills and a large cache of methamphetamine and arrested the Mexican man driving the truck.

Mexican traffickers have been increasingly smuggling the drug into the United States, mostly hidden in passenger vehicles and tractor-trailers trying to head through ports of entry in the Nogales, Arizona, and San Diego areas.

Fentanyl has caused a surge in fatal overdoses around the U.S., including the 2016 accidental death of pop music legend Prince, who consumed the opioid in counterfeit pills that looked like the narcotic analgesic Vicodin.

U.S. law enforcement officials say the illicit version of the painkiller is now seen mostly as a white powder that can be mixed with heroin for an extra kick as well as blue pills that are counterfeits of prescription drugs like oxycodone.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials have said that while 85 percent of the illicit fentanyl is seized at San Diego-area border crossings, an increasing amount is being detected on the Mexican border with Arizona, a state where the Sinaloa cartel controls the drug trade and fatal fentanyl overdoses are rising.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says in a recent report that fentanyl is now the drug most often involved in fatal overdoses across the country, accounting for more than 18,000, or almost 29 percent, of the 63,000 overdose fatalities in 2016.

We don’t have a drug problem in the US or a need for walls, fences or borders...and apparently no shortage of Texas land owners feeding and watering criminals entering the State.

Only those wetback lovin' blue counties along the border where the wetbacks already outnumber the citizens.

Just look who they vote for...

I do kinda like that Alabama song....

To bad these wipes were busted, Getting rid of a quarter million dope heads seems good to me!

Agree Gunner, That is one reason we need a wall!

To bad these wipes were busted, Getting rid of a quarter million dope heads seems good to me!

I do wish Trump would turn the US military on the Cartels and all those who support them. It wouldn't take more than a day or two of 3AM attacks to wipe them out.

fentanyl is not easy to make , this stuff is made in china or india or Iran. they are killing us without firing a shot !

Yea, but what if instead of going to druggies some or even all of it could have wound up being dumped into water supplies somewhere or on raw foodstuffs by terrorists?

56 million users gone ...oh well....

*******************THIS***********************then intel and massacre those on this end!

Absolutely agree, the US military could easily do this, and it would be fun to watch

Fentanyl is making for some really good weed these days.

NICE!

What would happen if it was dumped into the municipal water supply of a large city? How much would it take? How would they abate the problem?

That many people ay? Why don't we just take those 256lbs and drop it off as a care package in the heart of the Middle East? And if the outcome of that aid package is good I can think of few more spots we might want "help out" later on as well....