What the Media Chooses To Ignore On The Nation’s Fentanyl Crisis

The United States is mired in an escalating war–and we are losing as the casualties continue to mount. 

According to the Centers For Disease Control (CDC), overdose deaths involving opioids increased from an estimated 70,029 in 2020 to 80,816 in 2021. These numbers are precipitously up from previous years. In fact, the yearly opioid overdose deaths have increased three-fold over the last decade. Nearly 500,000 have lost their lives due to these overdoses during this time frame. As a comparison, this approximates the number of American service members’ lives lost during World War II. 

The numbers are growing and are indeed staggering. The drug becoming more and more responsible for these deaths is a synthetic opioid known as fentanyl, a particularly potent drug—50 to 100 times stronger than morphine that was developed primarily for cancer patients to address intense pain. On the street, fentanyl is either being abused directly or is being laced into other narcotics destined for unsuspecting drug abusers.

Most alarming is that the average life expectancy in the U.S. has gone down—by 6 months for a person born in 2021 as compared to one born in 2020 to a low that has not been seen since 1996. And while deaths due to the Covid pandemic have been cited, deaths due to drug overdoses have been specifically implicated in the reported diminishing life span numbers. Fentanyl poisoning is now the leading cause of death for adults 18-45 years of age in the U.S.

One could pick up most any daily newspaper and find front page articles on the opioid crisis in America. It is certainly not being ignored by the media. In addition to covering overdose deaths, the media routinely reports on how opioid drug abuse directly contributes to mental health issues and rampant homelessness in so many of our major cities. 

It is easy to find such reporting in California’s largest daily newspapers. The front page headline of a December L.A. Times article screamed:

              “Fentanyl deaths in L.A. County soared 1,280% between 2016 and 2021, report finds.”

And this would be no doubt accurate as in L.A. County the number of deaths linked to fentanyl rose from 109 in 2016 to 1,504 in 2021. Of course, the Times was quick to point out that among these overdose deaths there was a clear racial and income disparity as blacks and the poor have been disproportionately affected. 

A December San Francisco Chronicle article with several days of follow-ups, detailed the horrific incident where a 10 month old baby was found to have been a victim an accidental fentanyl overdose at a Marina area playground. 10 months old!

These articles detail how young people in particular are vulnerable to a lethal fentanyl episode as their bodies have yet to be exposed to the drug. Yet, even the most hard core of opioid abusers are dying from fentanyl overdoses due to the shear potency of the drug.

The media quite accurately reports on many of the issues that elected officials and public health experts are grappling with. Of critical importance is making certain that the drug naloxone or Narcan is available in as many public and private locations as possible and is not just left with emergency first responders. Naloxone is essentially the antidote drug, that if administered when an opioid overdose is encountered will reverse its effects and potentially save a life. There have been numerous incidents where naloxone has been administered effectively. Additionally, specialized test strips can be used to detect the presence of Fentanyl perhaps laced into other drugs and serve as a preventative of a lethal overdose.

Also being reported is the ongoing quest to establish safe consumption sites, where drug users can inject narcotics under the supervision of trained medical personnel and potentially avoid lethal overdoses or exposure to communicable diseases such as hepatitis and HIV. These sites have been established in other nations with varying and at times disputed levels of success.  Pilot programs for such centers are cropping up in the U.S. as well.

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed Senate Bill 57 last year that would have established such centers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland. Newsom vetoed the controversial bill as he lamented potential “unintended consequences,” but he wrote in his veto message:

“I remain open to this discussion when those local officials come back to the Legislature with recommendations for a truly limited pilot program — with comprehensive plans for siting, operations, community partnerships, and fiscal sustainability that demonstrate how these programs will be run safely and effectively.”

And while these and other issues surrounding the fentanyl overdose epidemic are being covered, there is one glaring exception to this reporting—and perhaps more importantly to the discussions and actions of elected officials—Just where is this deadly poison we know as fentanyl coming from?

For the most part, the answer is not too surprisingly our neighbor to the south, Mexico. While much of the precursors to deadly fentanyl are manufactured in China, these materials and chemicals find their way to Mexico where the illegal drug cartels process the raw materials into fentanyl for distribution in the U.S. 

Yet, where is the reporting of this in the mainstream media? You would be hard pressed to find any such reference. At best, the mainstream media will attempt to thwart the notion that fentanyl is arriving in the U.S. via the millions of huddled masses that cross our border illegally—seeking asylum as per the MSM—each year. They will report instead that the drug is being smuggled almost entirely by U.S. citizens through our officially recognized border crossings. Perhaps, but……

Anne Maricich, acting Director of Field Operations for the San Diego Field Office of U.S. Customs and Border Protection stated, “Drug trafficking organizations will use anyone they can to help them with their dangerous and illegal activities, including regular border crossers as well as teens in the hopes that they won’t arouse suspicion.”

And if nefarious Mexican individuals and organizations are involved in human smuggling of illegals over our border, wouldn’t it be counterintuitive to believe that illegal drugs such as fentanyl aren’t being smuggled right along with them?

Quite predictably, walking in locked cadence with the MSM choosing to ignore the origin of the deadly drug that is killing our citizens by the thousands are our Democrat office holders who seem more intent on adjusting policy in order to accelerate and legitimize the influx of migrants from nations south of our border into the U.S.

Just last month, California Governor Gavin Newsom visited a migrant shelter in Mexicali  to highlight his concerns for immigration and asylum seekers at our southern border.  In his press release, he said:

“California has invested roughly $1 billion over the past three years to support the health and safety of migrants as well as the surrounding border communities, but we cannot continue to do this work alone. It is long past time for Republicans in Congress to engage on real solutions to meet the public safety, public health and humanitarian issues at our border and in our immigration system.”

The health and safety of migrants? Public health issues at our border? Wonderful. What about the health of thousands of California citizens dying each year by virtue of the deadly fentanyl crisis with origins south of the border you visited? Nary a mention from the Governor.

Just weeks after being inaugurated as our 46^th President, Joe Biden assigned Vice President Kamala Harris with the task of spearheading the administration’s response to challenges at our southern border. “When she speaks, she speaks for me, “ said the president. Just months later in an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd on Meet the Press, VP Harris proclaimed twice that our border is in fact secure and wanted to focus more on an expedited pathway to citizenship for those seeking it. To that point, she had not yet visited our southern border with Mexico. Good grief.

To his (marginal) credit, President Biden, after being in office for more than two years now, finally visited the border in El Paso, TX on Sunday after his administration highlighted new protocols for asylum seekers. This policy would clamp down on and turn away those from South American, Central American and Caribbean nations who simply presented themselves at the Mexico-U.S. border seeking asylum. This is consistent with internationally recognized laws on asylum. This news of course came to the chagrin from Human Rights and accelerated immigration advocates.

But, once again during his brief time in El Paso meeting with Border control personnel, there was no mention from our President of the scourge of fentanyl and other drugs finding their way to the United States and killing our citizens in ever-increasing numbers. From El Paso, Biden will travel to Mexico City for the North American Leaders Summit and will meet with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Stemming the flow of fentanyl from Mexico northward is evidently on the agenda for discussion.

Ultimately though, whether the lethal drugs are finding their way to the U.S. via migrants entering our nation illegally or through official border crossings, one must ask–in the words of one former Secretary of State, “What difference does it make?”

The sovereignty of any nation and the safety of its citizens begins and ends with its borders. For decades now, our borders—particularly the one to our south has not in fact been secure.  Merchants of death with their now enhanced weapons of lethality continue to breach our border and kill our citizens in numbers that exceed lives lost in any previous U.S. War. Before we invest any further resources at our border for the welfare of those seeking citizenship here, it is urgently necessary to invest said resources into securing that border, upholding our sovereignty, and protecting United States Citizens—by any means necessary.