New Hampshire is currently in the midst of a storm that has been brewing for years. Slowly, each day, its darkness crept in like clouds before a thunderstorm. Why didn’t we see it?
Looking back now it seems so obvious that the current opioid crisis facing the state had all the elements in place to reach epidemic proportions.
New Hampshire already had the highest alcohol consumption rate in the United States, a shortage of addiction specialists and insufficient means of treating addiction. The rise of opioid use over many years and recent efforts to curtail prescriptions of legal painkillers left addicts looking for cheaper and ever more powerful drugs.
Fentanyl, the latest scourge in the opioid crisis, filled that void and has left New Hampshire in the grips of one of the worst overdose crises in the country. A synthetic opioid 100 times more potent than morphine, just 2 milligrams of the stuff – or 4 grains of salt – is enough to kill. The state now leads the country in synthetic opioid deaths, and overdoses have become such a public health crisis that local firefighters are now responding to more overdose calls than fires.
Beware to all, this storm is heading your way if it hasn’t already hit your state.
Data recently released from the Centers for Disease Control found that the number of overdose deaths related to fentanyl increased 540 percent in three years with over 64,000 people dying nationally from drug overdoses in 2016. Given that the tiniest trace of fentanyl can kill, recent drug busts highlight how dangerous illegally manufactured and criminally obtained opioids are to the addiction crisis in America.
For example, 33 pounds of fentanyl was seized in Boston by federal agents and police in February of this year. That was enough to kill 7 million people, more than the entire population of Massachusetts. Our nation is under attack from predators and profiteers who prey on the vulnerable. We are being attacked from both within and outside our borders and while the solution is not singular, it is incredibly clear that we must fight this battle with every weapon at our disposal.
The solution requires a dual approach – a big stick if you will, but one that’s held with a velvet glove.
The stick (preferably with a nail in it) would be used upon individuals who traffic illegal fentanyl into the United States. Chinese laboratories, a major source of global fentanyl production, ship the deadly drug to Mexican cartels who use existing trafficking routes to run fentanyl over the border and throughout the country. From there the regional distributors and then cottage or local suppliers distribute this poison on the streets, pouring the gasoline on the fire of addiction and overdose crises. The facilitators of illicit internet drug commerce, an increasingly popular venue for illegal drug sales, must also be curbed and penalized.
The drug dealers that are trafficking fentanyl must be prosecuted by the harshest penalties. President Trump has called for the death penalty for these drug dealers and more states are charging the dealers who sell overdose-inducing fentanyl with murder. Congress should follow suit and consider similar statutes in federal sentencing guidelines. Only then, when an effective deterrent for synthetic opioid trafficking is established, might the flow of this poison be stemmed.
Conversely, we must realize that addiction is an illness, and must be treated with a similar amount of resources used for any other life-threatening disease that kills over 64,000 people per year; the velvet glove. It can be hard to reach out with a tender hand to someone who seemingly has brought their pain upon themselves, but they are all Americans and their pain is our pain. We are past the time to assign fault and rather should extend our hands to help. Several pieces of legislation are currently under consideration, and Congress should move quickly to bolster funding for addiction treatment.
Solving the opioid crisis is something that will require bipartisan cooperation. During my time in Congress, I worked with members of both parties to combat the drug trade at a time when the crack epidemic was destroying families and ravaging our inner cities. Congressional action is once again needed to combat a new drug epidemic, the scourge of illegal synthetic opioids
The Hon. William H. Zeliff, Jr. represented the First District of New Hampshire in Congress from 1990-1997. As chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs and Criminal Justice, he focused on drug policy and programs.
