This week, Republicans on Capitol Hill highlighted the horrific, silent and ugly scourge killing more than 100,0000 Americans each year. Fentanyl overdose or poisoning is the number one killer of the country's young people and increasing at an annual rate of 25 percent.
The reality of the crisis once again became crystal clear when Rebecca Kiessling told the story about her two sons, who both died from fentanyl poisoning after taking pills they thought were Percocet – a prescription painkiller.
"You talk about children being taken away from their parents. My children were taken away from me," she said through tears and emotion. "I don't use the term overdose, because this was not an overdose. This was murder."
"If we had Chinese troops lining up along our southern border with weapons aimed at our people, with weapons of mass destruction aimed at our people, you damn well know you would do something about it," Kiessling continued. "This is a war. Act like it. Do something."
Chinese suppliers work directly with Mexican cartels to flood the United States with fentanyl, which is often disguised as or unknowingly laced into prescription and street drugs.
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"According to an August 2021 report (pdf) released by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Chinese fentanyl producers sought new ways to evade regulation. Every time Beijing puts a fentanyl substance on its control list (to meet U.S. requests), Chinese manufacturers modify that compound to create a new fentanyl-related product," the Epoch Times reports. "To evade U.S. regulations, Chinese fentanyl producers shifted their primary market to Mexico. Mexican cartels use precursor compounds imported from China to manufacture large quantities of fentanyl products, which are then smuggled into the United States. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the amount of fentanyl seized by the agency skyrocketed from 2020 to 2022. In the year ending September 2022, CBP seized a record 14,700 pounds of fentanyl, compared with 11,200 pounds in 2021 and 4,800 pounds in 2020."
Because of its easy transport, tackling the fentanyl crisis is going to take more than an increase in overall border security — additional agents, new technology, or a wall can't stop it. Instead, it's going to take the demolishment of the Mexican cartels and punishment for their Chinese suppliers.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, who also testified on Capitol Hill this week in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the cartels are poisoning Americans on purpose.
"It's an epidemic that has been unleashed on purpose by the Sinaloa and New Generation Jalisco cartels," Garland said.
They're murdering Americans, and the U.S. has to do something about it. With the fentanyl overdose rate claiming at a rate of 25 percent per year, we can't afford to wait.
Republican Congressmen Michael Waltz and Dan Crenshaw, both men who have been to war overseas, have offered a solution. They've recently introduced legislation that would allow for the use of military force against the cartels, which they say are paramilitary forces destabilizing the entire western hemisphere.
"The situation at our southern border has become untenable for our law enforcement personnel largely due to the activities spurred by the heavily armed and well financed Sinola and Jalisco cartels," Waltz released in a statement about the legislation. "It's time to go on offense. Not only are these paramilitary transnational criminal organizations responsible for killing an unprecedented number of Americans, but are actively undermining our sovereignty by destabilizing our border and waging war against U.S. law enforcement and the Mexican military. An AUMF would give the President sophisticated military cyber, intelligence, and surveillance resources to disrupt cartel operations that are endangering Americans. The U.S. was successful in assisting the Columbian government dismantle cartels in the 1990s and must do the same now."
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden, who has shown little concern about handling the crisis and protecting Americans, could work to sanction or slap tariffs on China until they work to stop the export of the deadly drug. Instead, the White House continues to call the communist regime a "competitor." As for pressure on the Mexican government to do more against the cartels, there has been practically none. We are at war, and the Commander-in-Chief is MIA.
