LAS VEGAS — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump should make the fight against fentanyl a priority, recovery experts and state law enforcement officials told The Post.
Nearly 300 Americans fall victim every day to illegal opioid overdoses, federal officials said in May. Synthetic painkillers – almost certainly originating in China – have flooded the country’s southern border in recent years.
Wednesday is National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day, established to bring attention to the crisis.
Swing states, including North Carolina, Michigan, Virginia and Arizona, will each have more than 1,000 fentanyl-related deaths by 2023, an analysis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows drug death data.
The influx of opioids has “shot through the roof” according to Washington County, Va., Sheriff Blake Andis, who is supporting Republican Hung Cao for the US Senate this year.
“Especially since the Biden administration and open borders, we’ve seen an increase in overdoses in fentanyl, methamphetamine just hitting the streets,” Andis told The Post. “And there’s so much methamphetamine now that the price is down, you can buy a kilo for what we used to buy an ounce.”
Although March CDC figures show a decrease in fentanyl-related deaths compared to the same month last year, some states have seen year-over-year increases, like Nevada, which saw a 23.27% increase.
The issue of open borders is a factor in the fentanyl crisis, Republicans say, while the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform – the “final” version of which still shows President Biden as the nominee – mentions his administration’s anti-drug efforts, promising more and better things in a Biden’s “second” term.
Hannah Muldavin, a senior spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, told The Post via email that the platform was passed before Biden dropped out of the race. He said the document “offers a vision for a progressive agenda that we can build upon as a nation.”
The GOP platform called for greater border security overall and a US Navy “blockade in our territorial waters” to prevent fentanyl from arriving by ship.
DNC spokeswoman Muldavin said Harris had made “many of the comments he’s made about securing our border and the successful actions the administration has taken to prevent fentanyl from entering the country.”
One antidrug group brought the issue of fentanyl to the Democratic National Convention delegates this week with a digital billboard in Chicago declaring the synthetic opioid drug a “weapon of mass destruction.”
Jim Rauth, founder of Families Against Fentanyl, based in Akron, Ohio, told The Post, “Thousands of American families across the country are living the nightmare of loved ones being poisoned by illegal fentanyl placed in pills or street drugs. And yes — many of them live in swing states.
“Families like mine are looking to our leaders to treat this like the highest crisis facing our country, because it is,” he said.
Dr. Marc Siegel, a prominent New York physician and professor at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, told The Post that more is needed from the government to prevent fentanyl from flooding.
“Our open borders are helping to develop the next generation of opioid addicts, and many of them are dying. National awareness days like this are important but not enough. The DEA is overwhelmed as are Customs and Border Protection agents. We need an all-hands approach,” said Siegel, an internal medicine specialist. .
“We are in a deeper hole with fentanyl. Originally designed as a long-term treatment for cancer and terminal pain,” he said, “(Fentanyl patch) “has turned into a very powerful killer that is often mixed with other drugs. Poppy fields in Mexico have dried up, replaced by 10-foot laboratories that make fentanyl.
Livingston County, Mich., Detective Dale LaBombard said the opioid problem is unrelated.
“I was actually working on narcotics there; I was assigned,” he told The Post. “The whole opioid problem has come up in the last few years like crazy. We’re seeing more fentanyl, carfentanil, xylazine.
Former Rep. Mike Rogers – Republican US Senate candidate in Michigan – also said the open-border situation that caused “10 million illegal immigrants to flee to this country” is related to the drug crisis.
“In Michigan, we have organized drug cartels operating in southeast Michigan, because of Democratic policies,” he told The Post.
Wisconsin law enforcement leaders say their region is also experiencing a surge in synthetic opioids.
“The border crisis is affecting the entire country because of fentanyl and illegal immigration,” Republican Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt told The Post while attending a JD Vance news conference in Milwaukee last week.
“We have an unprecedented number of people dying from fentanyl,” Schmidt said with exasperation.
“(It’s) coming across the border in unbelievable numbers,” he said. Dodge County has the third highest fentanyl death rate in the country by 2021.
Sparsely populated Schmidt County has had 38 fentanyl-related deaths in a year.
“I can’t build a wall around Dodge County,” the sheriff quipped.
Outside of swing states, of course, the opioid crisis is hitting communities too. Sen. Holly Schepisi of the state of New Jersey, a Republican, said that “most of these deadly pills are flooding into the US across the southern border which is exacerbated by the failure of the Biden-Harris administration to control the border.”
Addiction counselor Scott H. Silverman of San Diego issued a call for Harris and Trump to focus more on the opioid situation.
“The chemicals used to make synthetic fentanyl are spreading across the border and into communities across the country,” he told The Post. “That’s why, on behalf of the American people, I demand that both presidential candidates make it a priority and outline how they will work to end this crisis.”
Silverman, author of “The Opioid Epidemic,” said his optimism comes from working with politicians.
“I would say that my experience with legislative leaders is that they do the bare minimum they need to do, and when they’re done, they feel they’ve done everything they need to do,” he said.
Silverman said the government should “approach what’s happening with the opioid crisis with the same tools, which the federal government is familiar with with COVID: real-time data, education, prevention, putting resources where they’re needed the most.”
— Additional reporting by Victoria Churchill, George Caldwell, Anthony Miragliotta, Amy Sikma and Kelly Jane Torrance.
