President Joe Biden will make fighting the fentanyl crisis a key focus point during his State of the Union address Tuesday night according to White House staff and administration officials.
"In the past year, we’ve lost more than 100,000 Americans to drug overdose or poisonings. That’s an American dying every five minutes of every hour of every day. That is unacceptable, period. The opioid crisis is affecting just about every community in every state, and it’s being driven by synthetic opioids like illicit fentanyl," Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy Dr. Rahul Gupta told reporters Tuesday morning.
"Tonight, during the State of the Union, you’re going to hear the President talk about it. This is not a red-state problem or a blue-state problem. This is America’s problem. And he believes it’s going to take all of us -- all of us working together," Dr. Gupta continued. "President Biden will lay out a forceful approach for going after fentanyl trafficking and expanding public health efforts to reduce overdose deaths."
For two years President Joe Biden has largely ignored the fentanyl crisis given that it highlights his policy failures at the U.S.-Mexico border.
House Republicans held a hearing Tuesday ahead of Biden's speech about the ongoing catastrophe at the border, which is fueling illicit activity by Mexican drug cartels.
At the House Oversight hearing on border security, @USBPChiefTCA says that in Tucson Sector last year, agents seized 700 lbs of fentanyl -- enough to kill half the U.S. population.
— Adam Shaw (@AdamShawNY) February 7, 2023
52% of that was encountered in the field, being backpacked over. 48% caught at checkpoints.
🚨MUST WATCH🚨
— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) February 7, 2023
"We went from what I would describe as 'unprecedented' to a point where I don't have the correct adjective to describe what's going on." pic.twitter.com/PNAmyA15Jc