(PARKER COUNTY, Texas) — A woman in Texas is behind bars after allegedly attempting to send her ex-husband fentanyl-laced chocolates, according to the Parker County Sheriff’s Office.
Pamela Jean Stanley, 63, from Coleman, Texas, was indicted last week after being arrested in May for “developing a plan to murder her ex-husband,” in which she specifically wanted to purchase powdered fentanyl and inject it into a high-end box of chocolates, the sheriff’s office said in a statement on Friday.
According to officials, Stanley told an acquaintance — in conversation she didn’t know was being recorded — that she planned on mailing the laced chocolates to her ex-husband, making it appear like the package was from a travel agency as a “congratulatory gift for his recent engagement with a ‘honeymoon’ incentive offer.”
Through an undercover ruse in the parking lot of a local motel on May 30, an investigator “solicited the purchase” of what Stanley believed was fentanyl, with officials “immediately” taking her into custody, the sheriff’s office said.
At the time of her arrest, Stanley was also in possession of a substance “tested as containing 9.5 grams of methamphetamine,” according to authorities.
Stanley was indicted on Friday for criminal solicitation with intent to commit murder, criminal attempt to commit murder and possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, officials said.
Her ex-husband, Jeff Kauth, told ABC News Dallas station WFAA that this was not the first time he had concerns about his ex-wife’s alleged threats, with Kauth previously talking to investigators about rumors of Stanley hiring a hitman.
“It didn’t really surprise me because she’s kind of that way,” Kauth told WFAA. “Her plan was pretty ingenious. She thought this stuff through.”
The two were married for 14 years before they divorced in 2019, Kauth told WFAA. For his safety amid his ex-wife’s alleged threats, Kauth said he installed security cameras around his house and even placed a “dummy” he built wearing his hat and jacket in the kitchen as a decoy in case she tried to shoot toward him.
“I was hoping she would move on or find happiness, I was hoping she’d hope the same for me, but it just didn’t work out that way,” Kauth told WFAA.
Kauth said if Stanley had been successful in her alleged plan, he “probably would’ve eaten” the laced chocolates and said he is “relieved” she was caught by officials.
“I’ll never look at a box of chocolates the same,” Kauth told WFAA.
Stanley remains in custody, with a bond set to $450,000, the sheriff’s office said.
She was previously arrested in 2019 for deadly discharge of a firearm, according to jail records.
Court records indicate that she is scheduled to appear for a pre-trial hearing on Aug. 12, with her jury trial beginning on Oct. 20.
The attorney representing Stanley did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Danielle Parhizkaran/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
(FALL RIVER, Mass.) — Shirley Chambra was outside smoking a cigarette when she saw sparks and then flames at her home: the Gabriel House assisted-living facility in Fall River, Massachusetts, according to her nephew, Ken Pelletier.
“I’m sure she felt so helpless being outside,” Pelletier told ABC News. “She’s lived there long enough she knows probably everybody there.”
Responders found multiple people “hanging out of the windows, screaming and begging to be rescued,” Fall River Fire Chief Jeffrey Bacon said.
About 70 people lived in the building, many of whom are immobile and have oxygen tanks, officials said.
Without responders’ quick actions, “we would’ve seen an even far — an unimaginable loss of life here, given the vulnerability of this population,” Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said.
When Pelletier saw the news of the fire, he said he rushed over to the facility and found his aunt on a bus with other residents, some of whom were covered in soot.
“She looked like she was in shock,” he said. “She was scared.”
“I’m sure when she left last night to go have a cigarette, she only left with what she has on her back, and, you know, her walker,” he added.
Pelletier said it was a relief to see Chambra alive.
“You have all those thoughts and things running through your mind, you know, worst case scenario,” he said.
The cause of the fire is under investigation. The Bristol County District Attorney’s office said it “does not appear to be suspicious.”
The DA’s office identified the residents killed as: 64-year-old Rui Albernaz, 61-year-old Ronald Codega, 69-year-old Margaret Duddy, 78-year-old Robert King, 71-year-old Kim Mackin, 78-year-old Richard Rochon, 86-year-old Eleanor Willett. The names of the other two victims — a 70-year-old woman and a 77-year-old man — have not been released.
(NEW YORK) — Consumer prices rose 2.7% in June compared to a year ago, marking a notable surge of price increases as President Donald Trump’s tariff policy took hold and some retailers warned they may pass some of the tax burden onto shoppers.
The reading matched economists’ expectations.
The fresh data indicated an acceleration from 2.4% annual inflation recorded in May. Still, the inflation rate clocked in below 3% recorded in January, the month Trump took office.
Despite a rise of inflation, Trump appeared to celebrate the data on Tuesday. The president issued a social media post highlighting “Very Low Inflation” and calling on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates by 3 percentage points.
The White House also touted the inflation reading, saying the rate of price increases demonstrates inflation is “on the right track.” Core inflation — a measure of inflation that strips out volatile food and energy prices — has matched or beaten economists’ expectations every month since Trump took office, the White House said.
“The data proves that President Trump is stabilizing inflation and the Panicans continue to be wrong about tariffs raising prices,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement on Tuesday.
Egg prices cooled significantly in June, deviating from an overall rise in prices. The price of eggs climbed 27% over the year ending in June, which marked a slowdown from 41% year-over-year growth in May.
Under Trump, inflation has defied doomsday predictions and helped to propel sturdy economic performance.
While inflation has eased, price increases have persisted at a higher rate than the Federal Reserve’s target level of 2%.
Some analysts expect price increases to accelerate over the coming months as tariffs take hold, though they acknowledged that the path forward remains unclear amid Trump’s fluctuating policy.
Typically, importers pass along a share of the tariff-related tax burden in the form of higher costs for shoppers. A host of major retailers, including Walmart and Best Buy, has warned about potential price hikes as a result of Trump’s levies.
The Federal Reserve issued a forecast last month indicating the central bank expects a rekindling of inflation.
The personal consumption expenditures index, a measure of inflation preferred by the Fed, will rise from 2.1% to 3% over the remainder of 2025, the central bank predicted. That forecast marked higher inflation expectations than the central bank had issued in March.
So far this year, the Fed has opted to hold interest rates steady as policymakers assess the potential impact of tariffs.
Speaking at a press conference in Washington, D.C., last month, Powell said tariffs would likely “push up prices and weigh on economic activity” over the course of this year. But, he added, the effects would depend on the “ultimate level” of tariffs, which have frequently shifted.
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, a top economic advisor to Trump, on Monday rebuked concerns about tariff-related inflation. The Fed, Hassett told CNBC, has been “very, very wrong” in its assessment of a potential resurgence of price increases.
The posture of restraint at the Fed in recent months has elicited sharp and repeated criticism from Trump.
“We have a man who just refuses to lower the Fed rate,” Trump told reporters last month. “Maybe I should go to the Fed. Am I allowed to appoint myself? I’d do a much better job than these people.”
The president is legally barred from appointing himself head of the Fed, an independent federal agency.
The Fed is set to hold its next meeting on July 29 and 30. Investors peg the chances of a decision to leave rates unchanged at 95%, according to the CME FedWatch Tool, a measure of market sentiment.
(LONDON) — Russia continued its nightly bombardment of Ukraine overnight into Tuesday, shortly after President Donald Trump announced his decision to supply Ukraine with new military equipment and White House threats of further economic measures against Moscow.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia targeted several regions overnight with 267 drones, of which around 200 were Shahed attack drones and the rest decoys. The air force said it shot down or otherwise suppressed 244 drones. Twenty-three drones impacted across seven locations, with falling debris reported in nine locations, the air force said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said its forces downed at least 70 Ukrainian drones overnight into Tuesday morning. Among the areas targeted was the southwestern Voronezh region which borders northeastern Ukraine. At least 24 people were injured there, Gov. Aleksandr Gusev said on Telegram.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin would make a decision about how to respond to Trump.
“The U.S. president’s statements are very serious,” Peskov told reporters during a daily briefing. “Some of them are addressed personally to President Putin. We definitely need time to analyze what was said in Washington.”
Dmitry Medvedev — — the former Russian president and prime minister now serving as the deputy chairman of the country’s Security Council — was more forthright, writing on social media that the Kremlin was unmoved by what he called Trump’s “theatrical ultimatum.”
“The world shuddered, expecting the consequences,” wrote Medvedev, who during Moscow’s full-scale war on Ukraine has become known as a particularly hawkish voice within Putin’s security establishment. “Belligerent Europe was disappointed. Russia didn’t care.”
The Kremlin also on Tuesday dismissed reports — first published by The Washington Post and Financial Times — that Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy if Ukrainian forces could strike Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The White House, though, confirmed to ABC News that the matter was discussed.
“President Trump was merely asking a question, not encouraging further killing,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “He’s working tirelessly to stop the killing and end this war.”
Leavitt said the reports took the discussion “wildly out of context.”
Trump said during an Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Monday that he would impose “severe tariffs” — though it was not entirely clear if the president was referring to tariffs, sanctions or both — against Russia and its trading partners if a ceasefire deal is not reached in 50 days.
Trump also said he had approved a new tranche of weapons to Ukraine worth “billions of dollars.” But details of what Trump called a “very big deal” remain unclear. Two U.S. defense officials told ABC News on Monday that the Pentagon was still working on exactly what military aid could be sent to Ukraine.
The defense officials said 17 Patriot surface-to-air missile systems that Trump mentioned would come entirely from European allies, who would then purchase new replacement systems from the U.S.
The Patriot systems — of which Ukraine currently has at least six, two of which were provided by the U.S. and four by other NATO allies — have become a key in Ukraine’s defense against Russian drone, missile and airstrikes since they arrived in the country in 2023.
“We’re going to have some come very soon, within days,” Trump said when asked how long the new batch of American weapons would take to arrive. On Patriots specifically, the president said, “They’re going to start arriving very soon.”
Trump’s announcement came after months of rising frustration in the White House over Russia’s intensifying bombardments of Ukraine and its failure to commit to a full ceasefire.
Speaking on Sunday, Trump said of Russian Putin, “He talks nice and then he bombs everybody in the evening. There’s a little bit of a problem there.”
But questions remain about Trump’s threat to impose 100% “secondary tariffs” on nations doing business with Russia. The US has negligible imports from Russia, which account for around 0.2% of U.S. imports, according to Census Bureau data.
The threat of secondary tariffs or sanctions on Russia’s trading partners appears more significant, though may prompt retaliatory measures against the U.S. China and India, for example, are among Moscow’s customers for its fossil fuel exports.
Despite the open questions, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had a “very good conversation” with Trump on Monday. “Thank you for your willingness to support Ukraine and continue to work together to stop the killings and establish a lasting and just peace,” he wrote on social media.
“We discussed with the president the necessary means and solutions to provide more protection for people from Russian attacks and strengthen our positions,” Zelenskyy continued. “We are ready to work as productively as possible to achieve peace.”
Oleksandr Merezhko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament representing Zelenskyy’s party and the chair of the body’s foreign affairs committee, told ABC News he was “cautiously optimistic,” hoping that Monday’s news indicated the beginning of a “maximum pressure” campaign on Putin by Trump.
“The whole situation is a win-win-win situation for Trump, Ukraine and Europe,” he said. “However, the 50-day deadline is of some concern, because Putin might take it as a green light to intensify offensive operations.”
Russia’s summer offensive is already underway, according to the Ukrainian military, with Moscow’s forces pushing for more territory all across the front. Russian efforts are particularly concentrated in the eastern Donetsk and Sumy regions, Kyiv has said.
“To prevent it from happening it is crucially important to provide Ukraine without delay, now, with the maximum military assistance,” Merezhko said, “including offensive weaponry like long-range missiles, for instance Tomahawks.” Ukrainian backers also in the Senate urged Trump to build on Monday’s announcement.
“This announcement, by itself, will not be enough to bring Putin to the negotiating table and finally end this war,” Senate Foreign Relations Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said in a statement sent to ABC News.
“President Trump needs to commit to a sustained flow of security assistance to Ukraine over the long-term,” she added. “And we must move immediately on the tough sanctions package in the Senate, which has overwhelming bipartisan support and will make it harder and harder for Putin to prop up his economy and sustain his illegal war.”
That bipartisan Senate proposal — fronted by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. — proposed secondary sanctions of up to 500% on nations doing business with Russia, though according to Graham it will include an option allowing Trump to waive sanctions on individual nations.
In a post to X, Graham said Trump “put the countries who fund Putin’s war machine on notice: stop financially supporting the war in Ukraine or face 100% tariffs. If I were them, I would take President Trump at his word.”
Asked on Monday whether he would adopt the Senate’s blueprint, Trump told reporters, “We could do secondary tariffs without the Senate, without the House. But what they’re crafting also could be very good.”
ABC News’ Luis Martinez, Anne Flaherty, Zunaira Zaki, Soo Youn and Shannon K. Kingston contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Heavy rain caused significant transportation delays in the Northeast on Monday, with flash flooding submerging cars, flooding roadways and canceling flights — and more wet weather is in the forecast.
Flash flood warnings were issued in New York City; northern New Jersey; Westchester County, New York; Baltimore; Washington, D.C.; and Arlington, Virginia. A rare flash flood emergency was issued in Petersburg, Virginia, where 18 inches of water was recorded in some backyards.
In Plainfield, New Jersey, two people were killed when their car was swept into Cedar Brook, city officials said. This comes days after two others were killed in severe storms in Plainfield on July 3.
“To lose four residents in such a short span of time is unimaginable,” Mayor Adrian Mapp said in a statement. “We mourn with the families, and we remain committed to doing all we can to strengthen our emergency response systems and protect our residents from future harm.”
In North Plainfield, officers waded through chest-high water to rescue about 40 people as the heavy flooding destroyed homes and cars on Monday, North Plainfield police said.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy declared a state of emergency.
In New York City, police reported flooding conditions on the Cross Bronx Expressway, while video from Manhattan showed floodwaters rushing into the 28th Street subway station
Central Park recorded its second-highest hourly rainfall total, recording 2.07 inches in one hour. This represents a 1-in-20-year flood for Central Park.
More than 2,000 flights were canceled in the U.S. on Monday. The flooding also posed major disruptions to New Jersey Transit and Metro-North train travel on Monday night.
On Tuesday, the flood threat continues for the Mid-Atlantic. A level 2 of 4 for excessive rainfall is in place from Washington, D.C., to Asheville, North Carolina.
Rainfall rates could reach 2 inches per hour as scattered storms roll through in the afternoon and evening.
(NEW YORK) — Consumer prices rose 2.7% in June compared to a year ago, marking a notable surge of price increases as President Donald Trump’s tariff policy took hold and some retailers warned they may pass some of the tax burden onto shoppers.
The reading matched economists’ expectations.
The fresh data indicated an acceleration from 2.4% annual inflation recorded in May. Still, the inflation rate clocked in below 3% recorded in January, the month Trump took office.
Egg prices cooled significantly in June, deviating from an overall rise in prices. The price of eggs climbed 27% over the year ending in June, which marked a slowdown from 41% year-over-year growth in May.
Under Trump, inflation has defied doomsday predictions and helped to propel sturdy economic performance.
Speaking at the White House on Monday — before the inflation report — Trump touted the reduction of inflation so far this year.
“The economy is roaring, business confidence is soaring, incomes are up, prices are down and inflation is dead,” Trump said. “It’s dead.”
While inflation has eased, price increases have persisted at a higher rate than the Federal Reserve’s target level of 2%.
Some analysts expect price increases to accelerate over the coming months as tariffs take hold, though they acknowledged that the path forward remains unclear amid Trump’s fluctuating policy.
Typically, importers pass along a share of the tariff-related tax burden in the form of higher costs for shoppers. A host of major retailers, including Walmart and Best Buy, has warned about potential price hikes as a result of Trump’s levies.
The Federal Reserve issued a forecast last month indicating the central bank expects a rekindling of inflation.
The personal consumption expenditures index, a measure of inflation preferred by the Fed, will rise from 2.1% to 3% over the remainder of 2025, the central bank predicted. That forecast marked higher inflation expectations than the central bank had issued in March.
So far this year, the Fed has opted to hold interest rates steady as policymakers assess the potential impact of tariffs.
Speaking at a press conference in Washington, D.C., last month, Powell said tariffs would likely “push up prices and weigh on economic activity” over the course of this year. But, he added, the effects would depend on the “ultimate level” of tariffs, which have frequently shifted.
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, a top economic advisor to Trump, on Monday rebuked concerns about tariff-related inflation. The Fed, Hassett told CNBC, has been “very, very wrong” in its assessment of a potential resurgence of price increases.
The posture of restraint at the Fed in recent months has elicited sharp and repeated criticism from Trump.
“We have a man who just refuses to lower the Fed rate,” Trump told reporters last month. “Maybe I should go to the Fed. Am I allowed to appoint myself? I’d do a much better job than these people.”
The president is legally barred from appointing himself head of the Fed, an independent federal agency.
The Fed is set to hold its next meeting on July 29 and 30. Investors peg the chances of a decision to leave rates unchanged at 95%, according to the CME FedWatch Tool, a measure of market sentiment.
(WASHINGTON) — Immigrants who arrive in the United States illegally will no longer be eligible for a bond hearing, a move that comes as the Trump administration ramps up efforts to keep immigrants who enter the country legally detained, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The new policy change was announced in a memo last week from the acting ICE Director Todd Lyons. The memo was described to ABC News.
Before the policy change, immigrants could request a bond hearing before an immigration judge. The extensive new detention policy is also expected to face legal challenges
The news was first reported by The Washington Post.
WASHINGTON — Mike Waltz, the former national security adviser who left his position in May in the wake of the Signal chat controversy in March, will face a confirmation hearing Tuesday on Capitol Hill for his nomination as United Nations ambassador.
Waltz came under intense scrutiny in March for inadvertently adding a journalist to a Signal chat with top Trump officials discussing a U.S. military strike on Houthi rebels in Yemen.
President Donald Trump nominated Waltz to the U.N. post at the same time he announced Secretary of State Marco Rubio would take over Waltz’s post on an interim basis.
Trump defended Waltz in public, telling NBC News the day after details came to light in an article by The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg that Waltz “has learned a lesson and is a good man.”
Waltz later told Fox News that “I take full responsibility. I built the group.”
Waltz is likely to face some uncomfortable questions from Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a member of the committee, told CBS News in May after Trump announced the shuffle that Waltz’s confirmation hearing would be “brutal.”
In an interview with “ABC News Live,” Goldberg said he received a message request on Signal from Waltz, or someone “who’s purporting to be Mike Waltz” in March. Goldberg said he accepted the request and several days later he was added to a group that included Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, with Waltz apparently creating the chat.
Goldberg told ABC News a “long conversation” occurred between the group chat members on March 14, discussing “whether or not they should or shouldn’t take action in Yemen.”
The next day, he said he received a text in the chain from someone claiming to be Hegseth, or “somebody identified as Pete,” providing what Goldberg characterized as a war plan. The message included a “sequencing of events related to an upcoming attack on Yemen.”
Hegseth, Waltz and other White House officials denied the group had shared “war plans” in the chat but Pentagon acting Inspector General Steven Stebbins announced he was starting an investigation into Hegseth’s use of Signal during the Yemen attack. A U.S. official confirmed to ABC News that the IG was looking into a second Signal chat in which Hegseth shared timing for the attack with his wife, brother and attorney.
Before taking the role as national security adviser, Waltz served three terms in Congress representing Florida’s 6th Congressional District and sat on the Intelligence, Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees. He was the first Green Beret to be elected to Congress.
During the presidential campaign, he was a key Trump surrogate on defense and foreign policy.
Before running for elected office, Waltz served in various national security policy roles in the George W. Bush administration in the Pentagon and White House. He retired as a colonel after serving 27 years in the Army and the National Guard.
WASHINGTON — It was the first White House Faith Office summit with business leaders, but that didn’t stop President Donald Trump from using expletives and charged language against his foes in a room full of business leaders who contribute to faith-based charitable work.
For nearly an hour, Trump rambled about multiple topics his administration has tackled so far, ranging from tariffs to transgender people in sports while veering into tangents about his previous legal battles and first administration.
He spent little time, however, getting into the specifics of his newly established Faith Office.
Trump touted recent actions he made limiting the participation of transgender women in women’s sports, arguing how only two genders are recognized in America.
“We’ve restored the fundamental principle that God created two genders, male and female, that was a tough one. And we’re defending parents’ rights where the parents’ rights have been taken away from them in schools. You look at some of these school boards, it’s like they’re brutal dictatorships. And we brought it all back.”
The crowd cheered at Trump’s rhetoric; however, transgender advocates have argued how notions like that hurt the transgender community.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines sex as “an individual’s biological status as male, female, or something else. Sex is assigned at birth and associated with physical attributes, such as anatomy and chromosomes.”
In his freewheeling speech, Trump argued he was centering American culture around faith in his freewheeling speech, heavily criticizing Democrats as unfaithful.
“I’ll tell you religion took a big hit because of the way they treated all of us,” Trump said of Democrats. “And, we now have a confident nation, an optimistic nation, and we have one nation under God. And we’ll always keep that term.”
Trump also directly attacked former President Joe Biden, a devout Catholic, arguing without evidence that Biden wasn’t faithful enough and sought to persecute religious leaders.
“I think one of the reasons we won so bad is they really wanted to take God and religion out of your lives, and there was nobody to, you know, look up to. There was just nobody. It was – we were freewheeling and we can’t free wheel. No, we have to bring religion back into the country. And we’re starting to do that, I think, at a very high level,” Trump said.
“As president, I’ve ended the radical left war on faith, and we’re once again protecting religious freedom instead of destroying it. And God is once again welcomed back into our public square. It’s very important,” he added.
Trump used profanity while talking about his indictments, calling them “bull—-” and other explicit language throughout his speech in front of the faith-based group.
His attacks also extended to Republicans, calling Federal Reserve Chair Jermone Powell “a knucklehead. Stupid guy,” and attacking the intelligence of politicians like former Sen. Mitt Romney and his former Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
Trump lightly talked about his faith when reflecting on the one-year anniversary of the attempted assassination on him in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump stated that he was saved by God to make the country great.
“It was only one year ago this week that my time on Earth nearly ended. And if you look at that, God was with me. Because that’s something in theory, I should not — I should not be with you,” he said. “I believe it that my life was saved by God to really make America great again.”
On the campaign trail, the president spent time courting faith leaders throughout the country, often refusing to soften his language in those venues as well.
Trump has previously even quipped about how Franklin Graham, the president of Samaritan’s Purse and a Trump ally, would ask him to temper his cursing.
“‘Mr. President, it’s Franklin Graham, and I just want to tell you, I love what you do, I love what you say. I love your stories. I think they’re great, and keep telling them, but they’d be even better if you wouldn’t use foul language,’” Trump told a campaign rally in October.
“So I thought about it, and I said, ‘I’m going to try.’ And I did try, and I’m not sure, I’m not sure I’d make the emphasis quite as good.”
WASHINGTON — As federal authorities continue to crack down on the spread of fentanyl across the country, the Drug Enforcement Administration is warning about a surge in the use of methamphetamine, with DEA officials expressing particular concern over meth-laced pills being sold as drugs like Adderall to college-age adults.
“What we’ve seen here recently, that frightens me,” acting DEA administrator Robert Murphy told ABC News’ Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas in an exclusive interview.
Murphy said the DEA expects its seizures of methamphetamine to nearly double this year compared to last year.
The DEA has so far seized about 70,000 pounds of the drug this year, already nearly matching the numbers reached in all of 2024, Murphy said.
“Methamphetamine is by far the most coveted drug,” Murphy said. “This is what people want.”
The DEA has become so concerned about the continuing boom of methamphetamine use that it’s planning to hold a press conference on Tuesday to draw attention to it.
“In the first six months of this year, we’ve already seen more than … what we seized last year,” Murphy told ABC News. “And we project … we’re going to double what we seized last year.”
Murphy said that one of the most disturbing things about methamphetamine is that “Mexican cartels control 100% of it.”
“They control production, the smuggling, the distribution in the United States, and obviously the actual collection of monies and getting the money back into Mexico,” he said.
And cartels are growingly increasingly creative in how they try to smuggle meth across the U.S.-Mexico border — from hiding packages of meth pills among green onions to disguising meth shipments as loads of celery.
In one location during the week of July 4, the DEA discovered hundreds of boxes of cucumbers that had been lined with several hundred pounds of meth, worth nearly $4 million.
And in May, with assistance from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, federal authorities arrested six people who were allegedly bringing liquid meth into the United States and driving it to Kansas by hiding it in the septic tank of a charter bus.
Authorities became suspicious after realizing that the bus rarely had any passengers.
“They’re only limited by their imagination,” Murphy said of the smugglers. “And they have a very broad imagination.”
Murphy called it “a cat and mouse game.”
He said cartels now have a “huge focus” on pills, which he said have less of a stigma than injectable drugs.
As a result, Murphy said, turning meth into pill form makes it more marketable, and therefore more easily sold as something it’s not, such as fake Adderall or fake MDMA — the active ingredient in ecstasy.
“[It’s] all of the drugs that that are wanted by our college-age kids, and younger,” he said. “They’re actually getting meth, and they don’t know this.”
According to the most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, drug overdose deaths in the United States sharply decreased by almost 27% last year.
But while fentanyl and other opioid-related overdoses dropped the most — by more than a third — overdoses related to meth and other psychostimulants dropped the least — by nearly 22%.
“You’re buying a pill off the street nowadays, you’re taking your life in your own hands,” Murphy warned, saying that that “almost everything” the DEA is now seizing turns out to be “fake.”
“And as an investigator, our men and women have a hard time distinguishing between what’s real and what’s not,” Murphy said. “So there’s no way the average user is going to be able to do that.”
