A false hope on fentanyl

By NewsPress Now

Gov. Mike Parson taps into the political Zeitgeist with his $2.3 million plan to send National Guard personnel and Missouri State Highway Patrol troopers to the U.S. border.

National polling is starting to show border control surpassing the economy as a top concern among voters, something that should deeply concern the Biden administration. The crisis, after all, has unfolded on Biden’s watch.

Even in Missouri, a state far removed from the Rio Grande, images from a chaotic border create a growing sense of anger and disbelief. When confronted with the surge of desperate migrants and the impact on overwhelmed communities, Missourians are right to ask why the federal government and do-nothing Congress are unable to effectively respond.

From a practical standpoint, Parson’s contribution might serve as little more than a statement to the federal government and a gesture to a local population. Parson’s decision to divert resources from local communities doesn’t seem that far out of line when you look at the politics.

But all too often, the politics of grievance fuels the rhetoric surrounding the border. Elected officials keep dishing it out because people keep eating it up, even if everyday folks in places like Missouri are hard-pressed to explain exactly how fewer migrants would actually improve their own lives.

Sensing this disconnect, Parson and other red-state governors now reference the scourge of fentanyl. In justifying the diversion of state resources, Parson notes that Mexico serves as a conduit for an addictive and illegal drug that has devastated communities across the country, including Missouri.

But that’s only part of the story. The Cato Institute points out that in 2021 U.S. citizens accounted for 86% of convictions for fentanyl drug trafficking. In addition, 90% of fentanyl seizures came at legal U.S. border crossing points – often smuggled inside of vehicles – and not illegal migration routes.

Fentanyl is a major public health problem, but it cannot be hung exclusively on migrants.

While the chaos at the border clearly unfolded under Biden’s watch, the opioid crisis did not. A singular focus on migrants as the source of fentanyl trafficking would seem to absolve all others who contributed to this public health crisis up to this point: drug companies, marketers, the Food and Drug Administration, prescribing doctors and politicians who were slow to recognize the problem and enact solutions.

The objection here isn’t that Parson’s statements are somehow hurtful to migrants. The country clearly has a border problem on its hands and if his policies lead to a solution and a more orderly form of immigration, more the better.

The problem is that his public statements give a false sense of hope that the fentanyl crisis is closely linked to the border crisis when cartels may have figured out that Americans are the best way to get drugs across the border.

This means Missourians will be disappointed if there’s ever real border security and the drug problem continues to rage.