By John A. Tures
During President Joe Biden’s State of Union address, a Tennessee Representative yelled “It’s your fault” when the President mentioned deaths from Fentanyl.
Is it? To find out the truth, I research the statistics and policies, along with quotes, to go beyond the oft-repeated soundbites.
I began my research by looking at data on Fentanyl deaths from Statista. There were 730 deaths from Fentanyl in 1999, a number which grew between 1,200 and 3,007 through the first decade of the 2000s. It jumped to 19,413 in 2016.
On Donald Trump’s watch, those Fentanyl deaths rose from that number to 56,516 by 2020, the last year of his presidency. So, no, Biden didn’t create the crisis. Those deaths were trending well before his presidency (Fentanyl overdose deaths U.S. 1999-2020 | Statista).
Fentanyl deaths did nearly double to 100,000 in Biden’s first two years in office, after increasing threefold under Trump. It’s clear from the evidence that this is a bipartisan problem, not one president’s responsibility.
Fox News sought to claim that the 15% increase in Fentanyl deaths from 2021 to 2022 was “caused in large party by his open border policies”. (I suspect they meant “in large part.”).
Politifact evaluated the argument by Texas Governor Greg Abbott that Biden had an “open border” policy, finding the argument fairly subjective. Moreover, “PolitiFact found ‘open border’ — as a lack of enforcement measures — to be inconsistent with Biden’s and Clinton’s policy positions. They still supported security measures at the border.”
Republicans took issue with Biden’s attempts to reclassify attempts to cross the border as a civil offense instead of a criminal offense, as well as the expense of locking up so many who even presented themselves to border agents to seek asylum in the USA, and the Biden Administration’s plan to prioritize going after immigrants in the U.S. who commit crimes.
Fox claimed that the White House did not respond to a request for comment. But it was actually quite easy to find the Biden policy on transnational crime on the White House website. It calls for one of the largest one-year increases in Customs and Border Patrol funding, as well as targeting the finances of drug cartels and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs).
Will it work? I have no idea. Is Team Biden doing nothing about the border? Is it an open border policy? Of course not. It’s not clear that building giant walls in the deserts where no one goes was a much better plan.
In fact, the conservative Washington Times quoted Joe Biden as saying to would-be migrants “Yes, I can say quote clearly: Don’t come,” in his interview with ABC News. “Don’t leave your town or city or community.” It’s not really the ‘open border’ message one would think.
I have read dozens of articles of Fentanyl busts by law enforcement along the border (Enough Fentanyl to ‘kill every American’ seized at border). Instead of being listed as successes, they are curiously counted as administration failures. I think it’s good anti-crime work for those who seize such illicit drugs. We should be increasing our efforts in that regard, right?
Instead of supporting SOTU heckling, let’s sign on to the plan for CBP increases and seizing the cash from cartels, to help take on the Fentanyl problem.
John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu.