It’s not often you see the words “win” and “Trump” in a headline on CNN’s website. It’s rarer still when those words are separated by the word “for” and not some variation of that “win” being against the president. Yet that happened on Monday because, despite the liberal narrative and CNN’s seemingly expressed wishes, President Donald Trump scored a huge win for the American people in the battle to roll back the damage done to American lives during the opioid crisis.
I had to do a double-take, it was April 1st, after all. But the headline was a shock, considering the source. “China announces new crackdown on fentanyl in win for US President Trump,” the CNN website read. A win for President Trump being touted on the network of Don Lemon and Brian Stelter? Had to be a joke, right? But it wasn’t. And it wasn’t just a win for the president, it’s a win for everyone. Still, it had to kill them to write it.
“The Chinese government will add fentanyl-related substances to their list of controlled drugs from May 1, in a move aimed at curtailing the manufacturing and distribution of one of the world's most powerful opioids,” CNN reported.
This is huge news for anyone with a friend or family member suffering with opioid addiction, and there are a lot of them. Opioid-related deaths now annually outpace the number of deaths during the entire Vietnam War – 58,220 to 70,237 in 2017 alone. And a major cause of those deaths is fentanyl, one of the deadliest substances on Earth.
Fentanyl is also cheap, and a tiny amount of it can deliver a high. For drug cartels, it makes for an effective way to “spice up” diluted or “stepped on” heroin. The problem is it doesn’t require much fentanyl to kill. Administered outside of the supervision of a doctor in a controlled environment, it will kill.
The flow of fentanyl has been a major boost to the drug cartels, allowing them to stretch their heroin supply which adds to their profits. And that flow largely starts in China. With the Chinese government agreeing to the Trump administration’s request to ban all “fentanyl-related substances,” this closes a major loophole that allowed manufacturers to change their formulation slightly to avoid piecemeal bans that went after new classes of the narcotic.
Now any molecular configuration of fentanyl will be treated as the controlled substance it is. It won’t stop the flow, but it should choke it down significantly as we scramble to get a handle on this epidemic.
Make no mistake about it, this is a big win for the president. Even The New York Times, the paper of record for “The Resistance,” was forced to give him credit, even though they downplayed his role.
“China Bans All Types of Fentanyl, Cutting Supply of Deadly Drug to U.S. and Fulfilling Pledge to Trump,” was the headline at the Times, but buried in the story was the important detail that this unprecedented action by China was a result of President Trump’s sustained pressure on Beijing.
“In December, Mr. Trump announced a promise that Mr. Xi had made to him at the Group of 20 meeting in Buenos Aires, saying then that the step formalized on Monday could be a ‘game changer.’ He had previously taken to Twitter to excoriate China over the issue, accusing it of ‘killing our children and destroying our country,’" the Times reported.
In typical fashion, the media is reluctant to give credit where it’s due. The Times buried the pressure applied by the president that led to the change in paragraph 13 and the only time I saw the CNN.com story on television was when it was mentioned on Fox News because of the rarity of CNN running, even in print, a positive story about the president.
Breathless news packages about the opioid crisis are warranted, but so few about a win for the forces of good? It’s not by accident that you’ll only find one link on this on MSNBC.com, a short segment featuring clownish personalities Ali Velshi and Stephanie Ruhle downplaying the significance of this ban.
It shouldn’t matter where you fall on the political spectrum – whether you think Donald Trump can do no wrong or he is the root of all evil – this is a major victory for the country.
This is important, and great news for the United States. It also happens to be due to the actions of President Donald Trump. Because of the left’s hatred of the latter, the former is being downplayed. Shame on them all.
Derek is the host of a daily podcast (subscribe, it’s free!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which is about how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses.
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