Fentanyl is causing more overdose deaths than we’ve seen from any other illegal street drug. It’s potent, and it’s deadly. That doesn’t stop the people using it from wanting more, though. The withdraws are horrendous; physically, mentally, and emotionally excruciating (I would know. I used heroin and fentanyl for a decade).
The Narrative
Republicans at the RNC debate held by Fox News talked about fentanyl, but they put the blame on the wrong people as well as how it’s coming into the country. Ron DeSantis blamed migrants and drug dealers saying he would leave them “stone cold dead.”
GOP politicians and pundits would like you to believe there’s an invasion at the Southern border and migrants are carrying fentanyl into the country unabated. The truth, however, destroys their narrative and might even surprise people.
The Facts
More than 90% of the fentanyl coming into America isn’t brought in over the border, as the Right claims, but is coming in through our legal ports of entry. That’s right. The majority of fentanyl was smuggled in using a legal port of entry. Only around 10% or less is coming in across the border.
The DEA showed a lot of fentanyl is coming from China via the USPS! Sometimes smuggled in through Canada. It’s simply not just a Southern border issue. Far from it.
O.K., but it’s still the migrants bringing it in, right? Only a small portion of it is brought in by noncitizens. The majority of people charged with trafficking fentanyl into the country are Americans. That shouldn’t be all that surprising. I mean, this is a capitalist society, after all. There’s a high demand for the product here, which means it’s a lucrative business and nothing attracts Americans like a lucrative business opportunity (sarcasm, folks).
Don’t believe me? I’ve come prepared. Here are the receipts:
Taking all of this into account? If we’re determined to fight the fentanyl epidemic, should we be sending military to the Southern border? No. We should be finding ways to secure our ports of entry by keeping better tabs of exactly what is in all those stacked shipping containers. Drug-sniffing dogs maybe? That’s the fastest way of searching containers I would think. I have zero knowledge on this, though, so I’m not going to continue speculating.
Mexican Drug Cartels
None of this information changes the danger and corruption of the cartels, but it should put a pin into starting a war with Mexico on the pretense of stopping fentanyl from killing Americans. Instead, we need to focus on the root causes of addiction. Depression, anxiety, hopelessness, poverty, are just some of the reasons people turn to substances. If workers were paid a living wage and everyone had access to shelter, food, and medical/mental health care, I imagine the rates of people becoming addicted to substances would start to go down.
Republicans don’t actually want to solve this crisis, though. They want to use it as a way to fear-monger over the Southern border and blame brown people from other countries for the deaths of Americans. When in reality, it’s American citizens bringing fentanyl in at legal ports of entry.
Regardless of the facts, the GOP really wants to invade our ally, our 2nd most important trading partner, and the country that could help us achieve freedom globally from relying on China the way we do now. How do they do that? Blame the cartels and migrants for the fentanyl crisis. Do some of the cartels manufacture fentanyl? Of course. These organizations are run like any other corporation.
They have the same hierarchical organizational structure, among other similarities, and they run on the law of supply and demand. An independent contractor cooking fentanyl for the cartels explained that the drug they manufacture changes based on what is in demand and profitable. The biggest seller right now is fentanyl pressed into pill form. (See pdf below for quotes and sources)
Senator Lindsey Graham wants to designate the cartels as terrorist organizations so we can bomb Mexico. That is a huge mistake for a number of reasons, one of them being that the cartels are already here. Cartel members are located in almost every state in the U.S. They go undetected because they’re smart enough not to make themselves known to the authorities. My fear is what might happen in retaliation if we start bombing cartels in Mexico.
I wrote a research paper on fentanyl, the cartels, and what the Biden administration should be doing to address all of it. I talk about our alliance with Mexico, attempts at the war on drugs by collaboration between previous U.S. Presidents and the leader of Mexico, what went wrong and why, etc. I also educate the administration on the drug cartels and why they shouldn’t be labeled as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, but Criminal Insurgencies instead.
I’m including the paper in this article in case you’d like more detailed information on all of this. Bottom line is that the GOP is using a serious problem in the country to fear-monger and hate immigrants coming across the Southern border, suggesting we use our resources not where the overwhelming majority of fentanyl is coming in, but where a small percentage enters, and is confiscated by border authorities, just to keep their narrative alive. They DO NOT care about the Americans dying of fentanyl overdoses, they’re simply a pawn in their hateful came of racism and vengeance.
