Opinion

The Fentanyl Crisis Is Destroying Our Country And Our Leaders Couldn’t Care Less

   DailyWire.com
Map of United States of America made up of medicine.Andrew Brookes. Getty Images.
Andrew Brookes. Getty Images.

Towards the end of last year, The Biden administration launched what it claimed was a major crackdown on the fentanyl supply that enters this country from China. As the Associated Press reported, “in one of the biggest actions the administration has taken against fentanyl trafficking, the U.S. on Tuesday announced a series of indictments and sanctions against 14 people and 14 firms across China and Canada related to the import of the drug to the United States.”

One of the targets of these sanctions was a company based in China that provides pill dies for counterfeit oxycodone. A spokesman for the Treasury Department called the sanctions “the latest step in the rapid scaling up of our work targeting the financial flows that power the global illicit drug trade.” So they made a big show of the whole process, as a way of convincing people that they’re doing something about fentanyl trafficking, particularly from China.

What the Biden administration didn’t announce publicly is that, behind the scenes, they were making it much easier for illegal migrants from China to enter this country. They were doing the opposite of sanctioning Chinese criminals. They were making life easier for them. According to reporting this week from the Daily Caller, beginning in April of 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Protection dramatically changed the vetting process for Chinese citizens entering the United States illegally. Instead of asking these illegal aliens around 40 questions, Border Patrol headquarters instructed agents to ask just five questions. Specifically, agents are told to ask about the Chinese migrants’ “Military Service,” “Universities,” “Place of Birth,” “Employment” and “Political Party.” If they answer those questions without any red flags, they’re now released into the United States, with a court date several years into the future. These illegals are no longer asked questions about their firearms use, connections to human trafficking, drug trafficking, or prior arrests, among other issues.

The upshot is that, instead of spending hours deciding whether to allow a single illegal alien from China into this country, now the Border Patrol can clear a Chinese migrant in a matter of minutes. They’re no longer presumptively turned back to China. Instead, they’re presumptively allowed into the United States. And once they’re in this country, these Chinese nationals — people we effectively haven’t screened — are free to do whatever they want. If they’re transporting fentanyl, they can distribute it. If not, they can do what thousands of Chinese nationals are currently doing in Mexico — they can coordinate the distribution and manufacture of the drug. We really have no idea. The Biden administration’s policy, as of early last year, is to make sure that no one has any idea what these Chinese nationals are doing in this country.

All this is to say, contrary to White House press releases, there is in fact no serious effort to punish the countries that are responsible for the vast majority of fentanyl in this country. In fact, there’s a deliberate effort to make it even easier for illegal aliens to come to the United States, along with whatever they’re carrying. That’s true of Chinese migrants, as well as migrants from pretty much every other country. How is that working out exactly?

WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show

Here’s one way to measure the consequences. In 2023, all across the country, fentanyl deaths hit record levels. In Seattle, which doesn’t enforce drug laws, there were a total of 1,060 fentanyl overdoses last year. That’s an increase of more than 30% from 2020, when 717 people died in fentanyl-related deaths in King County. And if you go back a few years earlier, to 2015, a grand total of just three people in all of King County OD’d on fentanyl.

Now Seattle is a completely different city. Fentanyl is now so prevalent in Seattle that people walking downtown often see paramedics and police officers responding to overdoses. A few days ago, one local journalist recorded one of those moments. He caught up with a man who had just overdosed a few minutes before. Watch:

Notice how routine this is to everyone involved. The police and the firemen aren’t fazed by it. They’re just walking away. They’re not remotely shocked that the guy who was just overdosing is walking away, practically promising to overdose again as quickly as possible. This is the norm now.

It definitely isn’t unique to Seattle. It’s happening in pretty much every big city. Sacramento County also saw record fentanyl deaths last year. And in L.A., the Los Angeles Times just reported that, “For the first time in recent years, fentanyl surpassed methamphetamine as the most common drug listed as a cause of overdose deaths. … Fentanyl was blamed in almost 60% of all accidental drug or alcohol overdoses in 2022.” Since 2016, the L.A. Times reported, overdoses in Los Angeles County “have increased almost threefold, and there were about 200 more overdose deaths in 2022 than in 2021.”

2023 was also San Francisco’s deadliest year for drug overdoses on record, and once again, fentanyl was involved in the vast majority of those deaths. This is a city that banned vapes. But instead of rounding up the drug dealers and removing them from the streets, the city is encouraging the creation of more open-air drug markets. That’s their “solution.” They want more “treatment” for drug addicts, which means no punishment or consequences whatsoever. Watch:

When they say drug “treatment” in San Francisco, what they ‘re really saying is they’re going to invest in more so-called “safe injection sites,” which of course is an oxymoron. A year ago, San Francisco enlisted an army of nonprofits to operate these open-air drug markets, which are ways for druggies to get high in public without violating the law. The results have been predictably catastrophic. But San Francisco isn’t changing their policy.

New York City has similar “safe injection sites.” How’s that working out? It’s hard to say exactly, because New York is a little slower to report their data from 2023. But their numbers from 2022 show a similar spike. Late last year, New York’s health department revealed that there were 3,026 overdose deaths in New York City in 2022, which they said was, “the highest number of deaths since reporting began in 2000.” The authorities said that Fentanyl was found in more than 80% of those overdose deaths. The limited data we do have from 2023 indicates that the surge is continuing. According to New York’s Special Narcotics prosecutor, “More people are dying of drug overdose in New York City than ever before. In 2022, drug poisonings claimed 3,026 lives in the city, a 12% increase over the prior year. Preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests the crisis worsened in 2023.”‘

Some of the stories coming out of New York certainly suggest that’s true. Late last year for example, a 1-year-old boy died of a fentanyl overdose in a daycare in the Bronx. Three other young children were rushed to the hospital. Authorities said the daycare was being used as a fentanyl mill. The husband of the daycare owner promptly fled to Mexico, where he was arrested. This is the kind of crime that would’ve been unthinkable just a few years ago.

But it’s not unthinkable anymore. It’s not just adult men dying from fentanyl overdoses, although they’re certainly a large portion of the deaths. Women and children are dying too. This is a trend that you’ll find in pretty much every major city in the country. And the Biden administration has done nothing to stop these deaths.

In the meantime, the federal government has opened up the southern border completely, so that these dead Americans are being replaced with foreign nationals. It’s easy to become numb to these statistics, but they truly have become hard to believe in recent months. As of August, we’re now at the point that more illegal aliens are being encountered at the Southern border every month than are being born to American mothers. That’s according to government statistics. But curiously enough, the government didn’t announce those statistics, like they announced their pointless sanctions against China. There was no emergency press conference at the White House to explain how it’s possible that we’re replacing the American population with illegal aliens, and what we can do to reverse course. Instead, this government data had to be dug up by a small account on X called “Data Hazard.”

Keep in mind, these numbers are just the illegal migrants that authorities are encountering at the southern border. These are the people who are caught or turn themselves in. This chart doesn’t account for the hordes of illegal migrants who cross into this country completely undetected.

What this means is that, at the precise moment that fentanyl deaths and drug ODs are hitting record levels, so is the level of illegal migration into this county. We are losing thousands of Americans every month to fentanyl — particularly young people — even as we import tens of thousands of criminals, many of them coming from the countries that are making and distributing the fentanyl. And this migration is only going to increase from here. Honduras is reportedly sending thousands of migrants on buses towards this country every day. And why wouldn’t they? Central America doesn’t have very many livable cities anymore, so they’re doing the rational thing and fleeing. The problem for Americans — whether they’re toddlers in daycare or people trying to live a normal life in Seattle or New York or Los Angeles or any number of other cities — is that we have nowhere else to go.

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The Daily Wire   >  Read   >  The Fentanyl Crisis Is Destroying Our Country And Our Leaders Couldn’t Care Less