Law enforcement authorities recently arrested a drug kingpin as a part of a transnational investigation into organized crime, as Mexican drug cartels expand into Alaska. Miguel Guevara claimed ties to the Sinaloa Cartel. What sets his case apart is not the charges, but the location of his arrest.
Mexican cartels targeting Alaska contribute to overdose deaths in the Last Frontier, as reported by the Louisville Courier-Journal. CDC data revealed that nearly 76% of Alaska’s 260 fatal overdoses in 2021 involved opiods or synthetic variants, including fentanyl. That data also showed that deaths from overdose in Alaska rose by 75% from 2020 to 2021.
“People target Alaska because of the economic impact,” FBI Special Agent Brandon Waddle said. “It’s truly supply and demand. It is economics in its purest sense, and by that, I mean where there’s less supply, you can make more money. So here in Alaska, where there’s less supply, drug organizations or criminal organizations can charge more money for their product.”
“What keeps me up at night is the fact that fentanyl is killing our small communities,” Waddle added.
Alaska faces distinct challenges in combating drug addiction, deaths and related crime because of its remote location and dispersed population.
Assistant U.S. Attorney James Klugman, who has prosecuted similar cases in Alaska, said, “Cargo and passenger routes that are operating under very little scrutiny in rural Alaska, that’s absolutely a channel of how drugs are being moved and distributed. And then, as you get to more rural parts of the state, you have many, many small villages that aren’t accessible by road, that you can only reach by air or boat.”
It’s an issue the Biden administration is focusing on as part of a years-long push to stem the rampant importation of fentanyl, which kills tens of thousands of Americans each year.
Meanwhile, naloxone kits, also known as Narcan, are available at many pharmacies and through most states’ health departments. Last year, Alaska received over $2.7 million in funding to prevent overdose deaths.
