Among the odd exchanges between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris at their first and perhaps only debate before Election Day was a dispute over who would better protect Americans from the growing scourge of illegal substances, especially fentanyl. This issue is of top concern to millions of Americans who have suffered the loss of a loved one to this deadly drug, largely imported from Mexico. How will these candidates measure up for this demographic in November?
As Americans weigh the respective offerings of the 2024 party platforms, differing prescriptions for abortion, economic growth, foreign policy, and border security vie for favoritism among voters. The irreversible, life-changing trauma of losing a child, parent, or sibling to pernicious fentanyl or other opioids is, for many, an issue of the highest priority – cutting across party loyalties and hardly confined to undecided independents.
Trump’s Tough Messaging
Trump’s tough-on-crime rhetoric and consistent messaging condemning fentanyl trafficking and Mexican cartels resonate with opioid-affected families who claim the Biden-Harris administration has been comparatively silent about their suffering. Harris stepped up her game on debate night, but her position remains fuzzy: She invoked her work as a prosecutor prior to her executive position as VP to eclipse her recent performance as border czar. She talked like a tough prosecutor, but her policy prescription is more money for treatment, and she castigated Trump for blocking Biden border policies that would have increased that.
Such logic may appease some concerned activists, but the constant attacks on Trump pose a double risk for Harris: a credibility hurdle and a policy challenge. Quibbling over whether Kamala was titled “border czar” does not excuse her from her leadership role at the southern border. Her efforts to distance herself from responsibility create a credibility hurdle, as both illegal entries and fentanyl deaths have skyrocketed under her tenure. Furthermore, she has invited additional questions about her policy prescriptions: Is treatment really the best or sole policy response to escalating fentanyl deaths?
Such deaths exceeded 50,000 the year Trump left office. That number rose 23% in one year under Biden and Harris to 70,000. More than 108,000 Americans succumbed to overdose in 2023, 75,000 of them to fentanyl. Throughout this period, Trump has jabbed his finger at illegal immigration as a contributing problem. At the same time, Biden officials have been reluctant to criticize Mexico, from where most fentanyl enters the United States.
A Policy Menu
However, the red and blue policy menus presented to the 2024 electorate are not confined to border policy. Decriminalization, defunding police, sanctuary cities, and a plummeting economy all fuel illicit drug use, yet Kamala and the Democrats seek a “watch-the-birdie” distraction, focusing all eyes on the southern border. Liberal pundits pooh-pooh Trump’s call for drug dealer death penalties, employing the military, or strengthening the border – but are voters persuaded that those interdictions are ineffective?
NBC News opined that “the government says most fentanyl is smuggled in by Americans, through lawful points of entry.” This argument rings hollow:
“Trump repeatedly blames the increase in fentanyl deaths on the influx of 10 million migrants who crossed the border during the Biden administration. But statistics on fentanyl seizures from U.S. Customs and Border Protection tell a different story.
“More than 95% of the fentanyl seized at the border is actually brought in via passenger vehicles driven by U.S. citizens, the government says. As of last year, less than 2% of those cars were scanned for fentanyl.”
This is obtuse logic: How does the government measure how much fentanyl it isn’t seizing from illegal border crossers and compare it to how much is carried in by passenger vehicles that check in legally at the border? There is no dispute about cartel trafficking in every US state. Fentanyl deaths can be tracked across the country based on fentanyl analogs: chemical fingerprints that distinguish different batches of the drug and allow regulators to know exactly which Chinese or Mexican lab manufactured the lethal substance found inside each victim’s body. It is not just Americans on vacation traipsing home from Mexican labs with fentanyl in their trunks. Anyone can see, including any parent whose child has been torn from them by this pharmaceutical industry creation, that there is an enormously profitable, gang-organized commerce distributing these toxins north of the border.
Fighting Fentanyl
Fentanyl deaths decreased last year – due to an increased availability of Narcan. The widely agreed best response to substance abuse disorder is education and prevention, not the vastly more expensive and statistically demoralizing treatment modalities favored by Harris. Defunding the police, decriminalizing drug possession and dealing, eliminating cash bonds, legalizing narcotics in some liberal jurisdictions, and destroying housing affordability and economic prospects for millions of Americans have unleashed an epidemic of fentanyl deaths fueled not by Mexican gangs or American passenger cars but by drug-permissive domestic policies.
Harris has switched many of her previous positions. Still, she has not signaled a receptiveness (despite being a self-described tough prosecutor) to tighten criminal laws, to fund enforcement of those laws, or to demand consequences for criminals, foreign or domestic, making fortunes dealing fentanyl tax-free. Her prescription for more counseling dollars will ring hollow in many ears if not attached to law enforcement and border security. It is a hard sell to claim Americans are peddling Mexican fentanyl for profit and that the border can be left wide open with no connection to fentanyl deaths. It is harder still to ignore a liberalized criminal justice system that has ground nearly to a halt.
