In October 2017, President Trump declared the opioid crisis a national public-health emergency. Now his fight over the border wall, which he has in part justified on stopping drugs, is a harmful distraction from that very real problem facing the country.

According to statistics released by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, there were 72,306 overdose deaths in the United States in 2017. Of those, the majority, 49,068, involved opioids. Synthetic opioids, “predominately Fentanyl,” as cited in the report, made up 29,406 of those deaths, the vast majority.