Last year, while many people were focused on the pandemic, the United States experienced another crisis. Our nation recorded the most overdose deaths in its history, most of which were caused by a drug called fentanyl. In fact, every 8.57 minutes, a U.S. citizen dies from an accidental overdose fueled by fentanyl. The drug is now the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18-45 — killing more young adults than car crashes, suicides, and COVID-19.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that’s 50-100 times stronger than morphine. The drug was initially developed to help cancer patients cope with increased pain but was quickly diverted into a cheaper and more powerful alternative to heroin by Mexican criminal organizations — mainly the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels. Fentanyl precursors are produced in laboratories throughout China and Mexico, laced into other drugs such as marijuana, Adderall, and Xanax, and then trafficked into the U.S. through our wide-open southern border.
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var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_63784178", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1102620"} }); ","_id":"00000183-6143-de57-a1fb-776bf4bc0000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedHow deadly is fentanyl? It only takes 2 mg to cause an overdose. That’s enough to fit on the tip of a pencil. Last year, Cooper Davis, a high school student in my district, died of a fentanyl overdose. Cooper took half of a fake Percocet pill laced with fentanyl that he got through a drug dealer on Snapchat.
Cooper’s story is not uncommon. The cartels are going to extraordinary lengths to target America’s youth through social media and even going as far as producing colored fentanyl pills designed to look like candy. We can’t continue to sit back and allow criminal organizations to take advantage of children across our country. Inaction simply is not an option.
Major drug trafficking routes along the I-35 and I-70 corridors make my home state of Kansas ground zero for the fentanyl crisis. I recently held a roundtable with local law enforcement and county stakeholders to find out what the federal government can do to assist officials fighting this epidemic every day in our communities. The answer was clear: We need to secure the southern border.
As a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, I have seen firsthand how the worsening crisis at America’s southern border has exacerbated the fentanyl epidemic. Mexican cartels continue to take advantage of the Biden administration’s inability to gain operational control of the border. Over 80% of fentanyl in the U.S. is smuggled into our country via the southern border. Since President Joe Biden took office, more than 17,000 pounds of fentanyl have been seized by Border Patrol — enough to kill every American seven times over.
My colleagues throughout the House Republican Conference have put forward solutions to secure the border, support our law enforcement, and help slow down the amount of fentanyl pouring into our neighborhoods. Unfortunately, the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress have turned their backs on this national security and humanitarian emergency. Biden hasn’t even been down to the southwest border to see for himself how bad the situation has gotten.
Despite the Democrats’ lack of urgency on the issue, Republicans are bringing commonsense solutions to the table. I worked with my colleagues to help introduce the Border Security for America Act. This legislation would resume construction of the border wall, put more law enforcement agents to work, and bolster technology to help protect the nearly 2,000 miles of the southern border. Republicans also introduced the HALT Fentanyl Act to schedule fentanyl as a Schedule I substance permanently and strengthen law enforcement’s ability to prosecute fentanyl traffickers. Both of these proposals were blocked by House Democrats and never received a vote on the House floor as a result.
If we want to shut down this epidemic and protect people from accidental drug overdoses, Democrats in Washington need to get serious about securing the border. When Republicans take back the majority in November, we will not stand by while fentanyl kills our loved ones, friends, and neighbors. We will take action.
Jake LaTurner is a U.S. representative for Kansas and a member of the Homeland Security Committee, the Oversight and Reform Committee, and the Science, Space and Technology Committee.
