Portland police say they seized illegal drugs with a street value of about $2 million on Thursday in one of their largest single-day drug busts ever.
Officers took 90 pounds of methamphetamine, 11 pounds of fentanyl and 3.8 pounds of heroin during the interdiction on Interstate 5, the bureau reported.
The Police Bureau’s Narcotics and Organized Crime Unit will continue to focus on I-5 “for ongoing enforcement and drug interdiction” because it’s frequently used by drug runners, police said.
Earlier this year, a traffic stop on I-5 yielded more than 200 pounds of methamphetamine. And in 2022, officers seized 80 pounds of cocaine from a car driving on the freeway.
Police declined to provide any details about Thursday’s seizure, including about arrests linked to it, citing the ongoing investigation.
The massive drug bust comes as Oregon continues to struggle with the three-decades-old opioid crisis. Unintentional opioid overdose deaths have been steadily rising in recent years, according to the Oregon Health Authority.
The problem has been made worse by the emergence of fentanyl — a hyper-addictive, cheap synthetic opioid that can be deadly even in small doses.
Last year, almost 1,400 people in Oregon died from unintentional opioid overdose deaths, the OHA reported.
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