The leading cause of death for young Americans between the ages of 18 and 45 is not climate change, COVID, or gun violence, but fentanyl.
Communities across Texas and the nation have been plagued by this deadly drug that has taken the lives of loved ones, neighbors, and friends. One person dying of a drug overdose is one too many. In Texas’s 25th Congressional District, Hays and Travis counties’ drug overdoses rose between 2019 and 2021. Across the state, Texas saw a 670% increase in fentanyl deaths from 2015 to 2021. Across the country, drug overdose deaths topped 100,000 for the first time ever in 2021.
This is a crisis.
Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported a 1,066% increase in the amount of fentanyl seized in South Texas, with enough to kill every American nearly seven times over. Everyone should be outraged and concerned at this surge in lethal drugs coming onto our streets.
Mexico is now the dominant source of the domestic fentanyl supply. The drug is primarily being trafficked into the United States by cartels who have operational control of our unsecured southern border. These criminal enterprises are flooding the U.S. with counterfeit pills at skyrocketing rates, with over 9.5 million pills seized just last year alone.
With President Joe Biden turning his back on Border Patrol agents and refusing to fill the gaps in the wall, his administration’s open-border agenda has allowed fentanyl to flow freely across our border and empowered the cartels to ramp up business in Texas communities. Republicans recognize this as a crisis and are tackling it head-on.
Last week, I co-sponsored the “HALT Fentanyl Act,” which would permanently classify fentanyl as a Schedule One substance, reserved for drugs with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is currently blocking this legislation from a vote on the House floor. As if Democratic obstruction weren’t enough, Biden’s Department of Justice wants to allow federal “safe injection sites,” creating government-funded centers to facilitate the drug abuse epidemic. I recently raised my deep concerns over this dangerous proposal in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Biden and his army of liberal activists have abandoned their responsibilities to protect people and instead prioritized opening our border for illegal aliens and keeping drugs on the street. It is time to act — we must promote policies that save lives, discourage further drug abuse, and prevent drugs from being trafficked into our communities.
Roger Williams represents Texas’s 25th District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
