Staggering amounts of fentanyl hit streets as the DEA watched and took no action, records show

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

40% : Its agent manual describes taking drugs off the street as "the usual course of action" but adds "there may be instances where the investigative objectives can be better achieved by not doing so."The agency has long used "controlled deliveries" in which constant surveillance of the drugs -- and often replacing them with fake narcotics -- is followed by a takedown to recover them, according to current and former agents.In interviews, several current and former agents likened the decision to permit fentanyl to hit the streets to the infamous "Operation Fast and Furious," a 2011 gun-walking scandal in which straw buyers smuggled some 2,000 assault weapons into Mexico with the intent of tracing the firearms to cartel leaders.The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was savaged with bipartisan criticism after two of those guns surfaced at the scene of the fatal shooting of a Border Patrol agent, and the Justice Department explicitly forbid agents from allowing firearms to be trafficked.Blowing the whistleHowell became so unnerved by his agency's failure to seize fentanyl that he began flagging overdose deaths that might have been caused by the very pills DEA permitted to flow to dealers.
34% : The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was savaged with bipartisan criticism after two of those guns surfaced at the scene of the fatal shooting of a Border Patrol agent, and the Justice Department explicitly forbid agents from allowing firearms to be trafficked.

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