Trump made fentanyl crisis worse; Biden and Harris have brought solutions

Marshall Helmberger

One of the many false narratives used by Donald Trump throughout his campaign for the White House is the notion that the fentanyl crisis is being fed by immigrants seeking a better future in America. As with so much of what comes out of Trump’s mouth, this story is virtually pure fiction and, as always, accepts no responsibility for the failures of his own chaotic administration.
Fentanyl has, indeed, been responsible for an unprecedented spike in drug overdose deaths in the U.S. since 2014, but there is zero evidence of a connection to illegal immigration. In fact, a recent analysis of arrest records from U.S. Customs and Border Protection by the libertarian Cato Institute, found that 80 percent of those arrested for trafficking fentanyl across our borders were U.S. citizens. Virtually all of the remaining were non-citizens, but they were arrested at ports of entry, virtually all of them driving vehicles. As the Cato Institute points out, that’s not how or where undocumented immigrants are coming across the border. Indeed, these foreign traffickers were simply entering the U.S. temporarily, as happens legally at both our northern and southern borders tens of thousands of times a day. They just happened to be carrying illicit drugs.
Further evidence of the disconnect between undocumented immigration and fentanyl is found in the trend lines of overdose deaths from this synthetic drug. What Donald Trump would never acknowledge is that the sharpest rise in fentanyl deaths in the U.S. occurred under his administration. According to the Center for Disease Control, 68,647 Americans died of overdoses of all kinds between April 2018 and April 2019. By April 2020, that had jumped to 78,021 and then jumped to nearly 100,000 annual deaths by the time Trump left office, a 45 percent increase over just two years.
What’s more, far from ignoring the problem as the former president did, the Biden/Harris administration has pursued a wide-ranging set of policy prescriptions that have remarkably slowed the flow of fentanyl into the country and reduced overdose deaths by as much as 30 percent in some Midwestern states and about 20 percent nationally from the previous peaks. Overdose deaths from fentanyl will almost certainly be below the levels experienced under Trump by the time Biden leaves office if the current trends continue.
Unlike Trump, who sees tragedy as something to exploit for political benefit, the Biden/Harris administration undertook a series of effective policy prescriptions that most public health experts believe have played a role in improving the situation.
That includes sustained international pressure on the Chinese companies that make the precursor chemicals need to manufacture fentanyl and working with Chinese officials as well. At the same time, the administration has worked closely with Mexican officials to crack down on the cartels behind the flood of fentanyl that began to arrive in the U.S. about ten years ago. Remarkably, National Public Radio recently reported that fentanyl has recently become hard to find in some U.S. markets, evidence of the effectiveness of the Biden/Harris approach.
Biden’s treasury department has also recently instituted sanctions against individuals at the head of some of the most violent cartels as well as Chinese companies that contribute chemicals to the manufacturing process. Experts in drug policy say the multi-faceted effort by the Biden/Harris administration appears to be bearing fruit.
The administration has also helped reduce the lethality of fentanyl through public health policy, specifically by making naloxone, the drug that counteracts the effects of fentanyl overdose, available over the counter. Many regular fentanyl users say they now carry naloxone with them and the ready accessibility has helped to prevent thousands of needless deaths.
It, once again, demonstrates that the federal government can play a role in solving problems, when those we put in charge are actually interested in using government’s abilities to make lives better for Americans.
Those efforts can too quickly be undermined when politicians seek to exploit crises to spread disinformation, target scapegoats, and shift responsibility away from their own lack of solutions. That, of course, is the standard operating procedure of former president Donald Trump.
Solutions versus exploitation: that’s one of the key choices in this election.