The Reuters series "Fentanyl Express" has been awarded an Overseas Press Club Award in the Malcolm Forbes and Morton Frank Award category, which recognizes international business news reporting in any medium.
A decade into America’s deadly fentanyl crisis, the supply chain fueling the narcotic’s production has grown into a ruthlessly efficient global trade, but one that’s almost a complete black box. Reuters penetrated this clandestine industry to show how astonishingly cheap and easy it is for drug cartels to obtain fentanyl-making chemicals – by buying and testing the chemicals itself.
The series exposed how and why the U.S. government has failed to stem the flow of these chemicals, despite major diplomatic and law-enforcement pushes by the Biden and first Trump administrations. It also showed how Washington’s own trade policies turned the United States into a major transshipment hub for Chinese fentanyl chemicals bound for Mexico, stoking an overdose death toll approaching 450,000 American lives.
In addition to the Malcolm Forbes and Morton Frank Award, Reuters also received citations in two other categories. Mohammed Salem received a citation in the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award category for his visual chronicle of Gaza in 2024, and the series "The Starving World" – which chronicled the breakdown of the global system for fighting famine – received a citation in the Joe and Laurie Dine Award category for best international reporting on human rights.
Media Contact:
Heather Carpenter
Heather.Carpenter @ tr.com
