President Joe Biden’s migrant crisis at the southern border has already had horrific consequences for a myriad of different people. It has resulted in the deaths of migrants making the trip to the border because they believed this administration would allow them entry into the country. The situation has resulted in migrant children being subject to abuse.
But there is another issue that is not getting the attention it deserves. The situation at the border has brought about a sharp increase in fentanyl being smuggled over the border. Last year, a staggering number of Americans died from overdoses. Fentanyl caused over 60 percent of overdose deaths over 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Unfortunately, America is seeing disturbingly high numbers of fentanyl being smuggled into the country. The Washington Examiner reported:
Fentanyl seizures by federal law enforcement inspecting goods and people attempting to enter the United States from abroad shot up over the past 12 months, more than doubling the record-high level confiscated a year earlier.
Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean for public health practice and community engagement at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, told the Examiner:
If they’re seizing a lot, it’s because a lot is coming in — because you don’t know the percentage of how much is coming through that they’re actually seizing.
The issue with fentanyl is that it is far easier to produce and transport than other substances. Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told the Examiner:
Only a very small concentration of fentanyl is needed in order to produce a high. So, this makes it much easier to bring fentanyl across the border — in smaller, but more potent, quantities than other drugs.
She also noted that “the illicit drug market did not suffer during the pandemic, but actually expanded.” She continued:
[F]entanyl availability, decreased access to addiction treatment, increased social and economic stressors, and overburdened health departments collided in 2020 and were associated with a tragic rise in overdose deaths.
Between October 2020 and September 2021, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized 11,201 pounds of fentanyl. The federal government states that one kilogram of the drug is equal to 500,000 lethal doses.
One might think that since the authorities have managed to stop greater amounts of fentanyl from entering the country, this means that lesser levels of the drug are coming into the U.S. However, Sharfstein indicated that this is unlikely. What seems to be happening is that the fentanyl coming across the border is being added to other drugs, meaning that a person could be consuming it without knowing. He said:
People aren’t overdosing on fentanyl because they want to die — for the most part, I assume. People are overdosing on fentanyl because they don’t know how much fentanyl is in their product.
The Examiner describes fentanyl as “a synthetic opioid that is up to 100 times stronger than morphine and 50 times stronger than heroin.”
Most overdoses have resulted from fentanyl made in places like China and then smuggled into the U.S. through Mexican drug cartels. The drug has a legitimate purpose when it comes to treating pain, but the illegal version is the one that is killing Americans.
As the migrant crisis worsens, it can be expected that this problem will also get worse. What is regrettable in this instance is that this issue is not being covered by most mainstream media outlets. The people who are dying from this issue are going largely unnoticed, which means it is more difficult to develop and implement solutions.
When I spoke to Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), he noted that fentanyl being smuggled over the border has become a dire problem. “It’s the 10,000 pounds of fentanyl that has been apprehended this year, which is an extraordinary number, an off-the-charts number, more than the last three years combined,” he said.
He also pointed out that in Texas, authorities are seizing a significant amount of fentanyl and that the state “had 400 pounds of fentanyl that we know of at the Texas Department of Public Safety in Texas compared to 10 pounds last year.”
The reason why the media is largely ignoring this issue is obvious: They have to cover for the Biden administration, which created this crisis in the first place. Moreover, they are doing little to nothing to prevent or discourage the flood of migrants from coming to the southern border. It has resulted in a situation in which CBP has been stretched thin with apprehending people sneaking into the country and smuggling drugs.
To put it simply, Americans are dying because of the migrant crisis. This isn’t just an issue of economic concerns – it is literally killing people. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this issue will be adequately addressed until Democrats no longer control the White House.
