EDITORIAL: Fentanyl, death by the dose – Washington Times

OPINION:

Progress is achieved when problems are solved, but Washington officialdom calculates that all things considered, it is preferable to allow certain troubles to perpetuate. Fentanyl overdose, which is killing Americans by the thousands, is one such problem. It is largely the consequence of President Bidens prioritizing of mass migration to the United States. With the borders unsecured, the deadly synthetic opioid is pouring into the U.S. and the body count mounts. The presidents progress is nothing more than tragedy.

Unnerving can only describe the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administrations disclosure earlier this month that it seized 1 million counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl worth $15-20 million in a raid on a Los Angeles stash house controlled by a Mexican drug cartel. The fentanyl-infused tabs are manufactured to look like genuine medications. Ominously, the DEA reports that when such pills are tested, 42% are found to contain a 2-milligram dose of the powerful opioid enough to kill.

Another drug bust in California last month involving 15,000 fentanyl pills brought two suspects before a judge who released them on their own recognizance. To no ones surprise except perhaps the clueless jurist the pair never showed up for their July court date. Choosing between years in prison and the freedom of the Biden border, the decision to disappear could not have been too ponderous.

Uninvited travelers are pouring in from more than 150 nations, drawn by the presidents wink-and-nod immigration enforcement. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has reported more than 1.7 million illegal immigrant encounters at the border in 2022, with three months remaining in the fiscal year, and fentanyl seizures totaling 8,425 pounds. During fiscal 2021, overdose deaths totaled nearly 108,000, 70% of which were caused by opioids. And as of the CDCs most recent tally in February, fatalities are up 11.9% this fiscal year.

Yet Biden administration officials declare with a straight face that the border is locked and double-bolted. Look, the border is secure, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas told a security summit in Aspen, Colorado, last week. The border we are working to make the border more secure.

Mr. Mayorkas is fooling no one not fully invested in willful blindness. Americans watch daily newscasts showing columns of immigrants by the hundreds wading across the Rio Grande to be met by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents, who load them onto buses and planes bound for cities across the nation. Worse, Americans read reports of fentanyl deaths that continue to occur in their own communities despite ever-larger busts of smugglers trafficking from Mexico the deadly drug worth billions.

The unprecedented influx of immigrants and drugs that have coincided with the Biden presidency can only be explained as intentional. In Mr. Bidens book, the long-run political benefit of allowing millions of illegal immigrants access to the U.S. homeland outweighs the pain of more than 100,000 American overdose deaths annually. It is a tragic and heartless miscalculation.

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EDITORIAL: Fentanyl, death by the dose - Washington Times