Fentanyl takes lives at the Navy’s boot camp base

As America grapples with a fentanyl crisis, multiple junior sailors have died from the drug aboard the base that houses the Navy’s boot camp in recent years, and investigators have been probing efforts to smuggle drugs onto the installation, including through the U.S. mail system, since at least 2020, according to records obtained by Navy Times.
Two other sailors are facing criminal charges in connection to one of those deaths, records show.
The Navy’s law enforcement agency launched at least five separate investigations into “illicit/controlled substances” being mailed to servicemembers at Naval Station Great Lakes, Illinois, in the second half of 2020 alone, according to Naval Criminal Investigative Service records.
Those substances include fentanyl, cocaine and the opioids hydrocodone and oxycodone, as well as the hallucinogen LSD, Xanax and THC, the psychoactive component in marijuana.
“Numerous service members have been interviewed and related the illicit substances were being sent via the US mail and/or in re-packaged food containers,” according to a December NCIS investigative summary report.
These incidents and sailor deaths, which the Navy has not publicized and which have not been reported before, raise questions about how young sailors have been able to use and distribute drugs there.