While President Joe Biden was speaking to reporters before visiting a new computer chip plant in Arizona, the commander-in-chief made clear that securing the U.S. southern border is not a priority for his administration. When asked why he wouldn’t go to the U.S.-Mexico border – while visiting a border state – Biden said the quiet part out loud: “Because there are more important things going on. They’re going to invest billions of dollars in a new enterprise.”
The president, however, has turned a blind eye to the fact that his administration’s failed border policies fuel a different criminal enterprise – one that devastates communities and families across America. That enterprise is the drug trade run by the cartels, and it is wreaking havoc on our country.
Last year, more than 100,000 Americans lost their lives to drug overdoses, two-thirds of which involved synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.
According to a September 27, 2022 press release from the U.S. Department of Justice, “fentanyl remains the deadliest drug threat facing this nation.” Just two milligrams – an amount small enough to fit on the tip of a pencil – is enough to be lethal.
President Biden’s own DEA Administrator even confirmed, “The most urgent threat to our communities, our kids, and our families are the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel who are mass producing and supplying the fentanyl that is poisoning and killing Americans.”
In the course of just 15 weeks earlier this year, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and its law enforcement partners seized approximately 980 pounds of fentanyl powder and more than 10.2 million fentanyl pills, which is the equivalent of more than 36 million lethal doses.
But to President Biden, “there are more important things” than someone’s son or daughter, brother or sister, friend or loved one, who has lost their life to a fentanyl overdose.
For the president, this apparently includes a computer chip plant.
If President Biden and the Democrats in Congress aren’t going to effectively stop the problem at its source, we should find another way to reduce the devastating impacts of fentanyl in our own homes, schools, and communities.
Fortunately, a research team led by the University of Houston is developing a fentanyl vaccine that could offer another option for Americans to treat and prevent opioid . According to a recent study, the researchers found that in rats that were given fentanyl, the vaccine blocked the drug’s effects entirely.
This new vaccine “generate[s] anti-fentanyl antibodies that bind to the consumed fentanyl and prevent it from entering the brain, allowing it to be eliminated out of the body via the kidneys. Thus, the individual will not feel the euphoric effects and can ‘get back on the wagon’ to sobriety.”
Though the vaccine is still undergoing trials, and its future success is unknown, it offers hope to those suffering from the effects of the ongoing nationwide opioid crisis.
Using new research, new ideas, and new innovations to address this crisis at the individual level and offer more treatment options for those struggling is exactly the right approach.
President Biden has ignored the relationship between Democrats’ open border policies and the skyrocketing amount of fentanyl pouring into our country for the sake of political gain. This is a disgrace and a disservice to the American people.
Leadership starts at the top. President Biden should make it a priority to ensure law enforcement has the full suite of 21st-century tools and resources they need (i.e. comprehensive, real-time overdose tracking capabilities and scanning and inspection technologies at official border crossings) to stop the influx of illicit fentanyl into our country.
