LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Tuesday, May 8th, marked National Fentanyl Awareness Day across the United States, an event to raise awareness about the urgent national problem of people dying at alarming rates due to illicit fentanyl, a dangerous synthetic opioid.
According to the organizers of the awareness day, illicit fentanyl is being used to make fake prescription pills and is also found in common street drugs like cocaine, MDMA and heroin. Fentanyl is 50 times more powerful than heroin, 100 times more potent than morphine and cheap to produce.
Rachel Jantz, a public health epidemiologist with the Kent County Health Department, says, “In 2015, fentanyl was involved in less than 20% of opioid-involved overdoses and in this last year in 2022, it was involved in 91%.”In 2022, 81 Kent County residents died of a fentanyl overdose, often in conjunction with other drugs.”
The state of Michigan recorded 2,599 deaths from opioids in 2020. Of those, 1,911 deaths were related to synthetic drugs, including fentanyl.
Fentanyl is involved in more American youth drug deaths than heroin, meth, cocaine, benzos and Rx drugs combined. It is also involved in more deaths of Americans under 50 than any cause of death, including heart disease, cancer, homicide, suicide and other accidents. Fake pills are the main reason fentanyl-involved deaths are fastest growing among the youth. Often consumed unknowingly by users, illicit fentanyl is driving the recent increase in U.S. overdose deaths.
But those increases may get even larger with the expiration of Title 42 today. Title 42 is part of the Public Health Service Act of 1944 and it was put in place to help stop the spread of communicable diseases in the United States. It gives the government the authority to exclude migrants from certain countries from coming into the country during public health emergencies as long as health officials determine it’s necessary. In 1966, the CDC was given the authority. Title 42 was activated during the Trump presidency in March of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and was used to quickly expel migrants seeking asylum.
Because of the expiration of this policy, many are predicting that the already high immigration numbers will go out of control to create an even bigger humanitarian crisis – and Michigan won’t be immune to it or its effects from the amount of fentanyl that will be coming into the country because of it.
With Mexican cartels charging around $2,000 a head to escort individuals to the Mexican border, the end of Title 42 is expected to bring in a surge of migrants as well as a surge of illegal substances – and billions of dollars into the cartels by the time our next election primary comes around.
Former DEA Agent and Counter-Narcotics Interdiction Business Development Manager for Rigaku Analytical Devices Michael Brown told KUSI News in San Francisco, “That’s $1.2 billion that will be re-invested into cartel fentanyl and methamphetamine production which will surge across the border into every city in the country causing increased substance abuse disorder, mental health illness and possibly the collapse of the financial infrastructure of small intercity communities which, of course, will affect African Americans and hispanics at a disproportionate rate.”
He went on to say, “The cartels are currently using vehicles and cargo truck transports to move the majority of fentanyl into the United States because they know that CBP officers are being re-directed to administrative processing and detaining the immigrants as they come across the border. This leaves the official checkpoints at the U.S. border crossings unmanned and CBP does not have the manpower to inspect those vehicles. The cartels know this and they anticipate that once Title 42 is over, they will simply flood those checkpoints with possibly hundreds of vehicles containing millions of pills of fentanyl which they know CBP cannot check for. Those vehicles will be waved into the country and then they will simply disappear into the fabric of the United States, delivering that fentanyl to every city in the country.”
While some in politics who advocate gun reform are calling gun violence an “epidemic” the fentanyl crisis is a real epidemic and it doesn’t look to end any time soon. According to the CDC, roughly 108,000 deaths during the 12-month period ending in August 2022 were linked to overdoses from illicit synthetic drugs such as fentanyl and methamphetamine.
Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) is also sounding the alarm about how the expiration of Title 42 will affect the already deadly fentanyl crisis in the United States. He told The Washington Examiner, “Title 42 was put in place as a public health emergency with regards to the pandemic. I would argue that today, given the tens of thousands of Americans that are losing their life to the fentanyl crisis – that in itself should be an excuse to keep Title 42 in place.”
Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina agrees and said, “If you don’t control your back door, you don’t control your country…” He said he wants to combat the spike in fentanyl-related overdose deaths by reinstating the Title 42 restrictions. Scott, who is expected to run for president, told Fox News that his plan, which has already been introduced in legislation in conjunction with other Senate Republicans, includes fending off fentanyl which includes freezing the assets of Mexican cartels. Scott said his plan also includes providing $10 billion to build the wall and another $5 billion for surveillance technology that “catches fentanyl before it crosses the border.”
Scott says, “I have a bill that allows us to reinstate Title 42 because the health care crisis that continues is not COVID. But it is fentanyl. So, if we attack fentanyl as a health care crisis, we can reinstate Title 42. That coupled with the other two pieces of legislation, I think makes us a healthier, safer country.”
