In recent years, drug cartels have built a vast and lucrative business selling fake prescription drugs laced with fentanyl—which drives addiction faster than any other synthetic narcotic, says Michael Brown, who was a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for over three decades.

The majority of people dying from fentanyl-related overdoses now are taking what they think is a fairly innocuous prescription drug like Xanax, and they have no idea that it’s been laced with fentanyl, he says.

The DEA says seven out of ten pills seized by the organization contain a deadly dose of fentanyl.

“You take that wrong pill for the first time, and your life is over,” Mr. Brown says.

Now he’s global director for counter-narcotics technology at Rigaku Analytical Devices, which produces equipment that can identify narcotic substances.

“In the 60s and 70s, drug dealers were concerned about killing their clients, because they didn’t want to kill their clients. But the client base today is so vast and diverse that they can lose 100,000 and still make hundreds of millions of dollars,” Mr. Brown says.

In this episode, he breaks down this new drug cartel business model, how the supply chain works, the role of Chinese money-laundering proxies, and what he believes it would take to turn the situation around.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.