“At some point, you have to ask, is the irrational resistance to controlling our national borders in Washington, more about the criminal corruption in our government than anything else?”
I first published parts of this article in 2019. Today, it is more urgent than ever, as we learn that nearly 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2020, with over 60% of those deaths credited to fentanyl. The pace is accelerating in 2021 (here).
Frankly, no one seems to care too much, especially in Washington.
As I write this update, nearly 1.5 million illegal aliens have been allowed to walk into the United States from Mexico – literally. By year’s end, it will be over 2 million. They are pouring in from 115 countries around the world at the invitation of the Biden regime, no questions asked. (On the Texas-Mexican border, nearly 20% are COVID-19 positive here.)
As bad as this is, the Biden gang has unleashed an accompanying disaster to the lawlessness on the 1900 mile border. The drug cartels that control much of Mexico and Central America have never had it so good. Transporting and steering illegals to the US border is now their most profitable business, which is saying something. The added benefit is that the chaos on the unregulated wide-open border means that the cartels can significantly tweak and expand their drug and sex trafficking business model.
Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith (just east of Del Rio, Texas) says, “[The] onslaught of illegal activity in our county has exploded. It’s out of hand.” He explained in an interview with NewsRadio 1080 KRLD that the county has become a hub for drug and human traffickers – all run by the cartels. “The cartels control both sides of the border right now, today. That’s more than a law enforcement issue. That’s a military and national security issue,” Mr. Smith added.
Lt. Col. Freeman Martin, Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Deputy Director, explained the expanding dangers on the lawless border. Besides the “off the chart” increase in methamphetamine seizures, the DPS has seen an 811% increase in fentanyl. “We’ve seized enough fentanyl this year to kill 80 million people.”
Backing this claim, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), in just the first four months of 2021, recovered 6,494 pounds of fentanyl – more than the 4800 pounds seized in all of 2020. And, the sobering reality is that only a tiny percent of smuggled drugs are discovered.
Unfortunately, “the war on drugs” has been no more successful than the “war on terror.”
[The Texas Public Policy Foundation, a 501(c)3 research foundation in Austin, Texas, has produced three separate 1 to 3-minute videos that provide readers with brief reports from professionals on the border. Cartels and Drugs, Human Smuggling, and National Security (all three here).]
During the early 1980’s I was part of a group that worked to aggregate then edit down the extensive and varied research on drugs and drug use in America. This process eventually framed the danger and the purpose of President Reagan’s War on Drugs, which he called a top “national security issue.”
President Reagan’s attack on the nation’s illicit narcotic drug epidemic and its devastating societal consequences was a continuation of legislative efforts across nearly 150 years. First were state and national laws to control morphine and opium dating back to the late 1800s, followed by legislation in the early 1900s addressing cocaine and marijuana, and then heroin. In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared the first War on Drugs driven by the recreational use of barbiturates, Benzedrine, LSD, and other powerful psychotropic drugs.
In 2018 the Administration and Congress engaged in yet a third War on Drugs iteration with the passage of a 600-page bill signed by President Trump, which appropriated $4 billion to fight the “opioid” crisis.
This class of drugs is derived from opium or synthetically created for pain relief and surgical preparation that attach to opioid receptors in the body. They include hydrocodone and oxycodone, among others, sold by prescription as Vicodin, OxyContin, Percocet, and morphine, codeine, fentanyl, and heroin.
In the late 1990s, various pharmaceutical companies aggressively marketed these new, derivative prescription drugs telling the medical profession that the new class of pain relievers was less addictive – or not addictive at all – than existing drugs. These lies and misrepresentations triggered the original opioid crisis through rampant over-prescription and the inevitable illegal, black markets in opioids that followed the success of the new drugs. (Many states sued big pharma, in part resulting in a $29 billion settlement in 2019, among many lawsuits filed.)
While the medical profession addressed this crisis head-on – the prescription of opioids has fallen by half – the illegal and unregulated manufacture of opioids, especially fentanyl, has more than filled the vacuum.
In addition to the cartel’s vastly increasing illegal drug running across the wide-open border, our wonderful friends in China, who exported the COVID-19 virus to the world at no charge, are allowing “pill mills” to operate. The supposedly illegal labs are mailing opioids straight to drug dealers and end-users across international borders, especially methamphetamine and fentanyl.
The cost of these drugs in human lives is staggering. In the US alone, from 2008 through 2015, opioids deaths have been nearly 33,00. From 2016- 2020 deaths from opioids alone have been over 150,000.
Fentanyl is the primary killer, though. It is comparatively simple and inexpensive to manufacture and is fifty to one hundred times as powerful as heroin, cocaine, or methamphetamine.
Making it even deadlier, Mexican drug cartels and local distributors frequently “spike” their base drugs with fentanyl to powerfully enhance the ‘high’ they produce, often to an unaware drug user. Fentanyl is so powerful that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) considers just two milligrams a lethal dose for an average person.
Drugs are like camp-followers to the human race. Wherever they have gone, there is a trail of addiction, degraded societies, and crippled empires, an enduring reminder that this curse is an evil warrior in the ancient spiritual battle around us. Drugs have provoked countless wars and created great fortunes on the back of misery and death. And despite laws, penalties, and draconian punishments, very little has changed over the ages.
In any rational discussion, directly securing the border through dramatic increases in ports of entry detection, personnel, equipment, and electronic surveillance, and physical barriers would appear to be the logical response.
Alas, we don’t live in such a world. Worse, since the Mexican government is compromised, we must assume these cartels also reach our government at the national level.
We now have to ask, is the irrational resistance to controlling our national borders in Washington more about its criminal corruption than anything else? There have already been many cases in Texas, Arizona, and elsewhere where local public officials have been charged for being on the cartel’s payroll.
The sheer volume of illegal drugs is unknowable by its very definition, of course. But depending on whom is doing the guessing and using what information, the drug business is worth from $200 to $400 billion per year in the US, and the UN claims that worldwide it is over a half-trillion dollars. Cash and untaxed.
How do tens of billions of drug dollars move up and down the financial systems without inside help? The most obvious answer is they don’t, and at least two major international banks have already paid massive fines for knowingly allowing cartel and drug money to be moved in their banking systems.
Despite the money, effort, and words thrown at illegal drugs, there is never a respite. The Border Patrol seized nearly 500,000 pounds of drugs in 2019, including 300,000 pounds of pot, and the Coast Guard intercepted about 500,000 pounds of drugs, primarily cocaine. However, the street price of both cocaine and pot has dropped because of increased supplies.
The Washington politicians and their moneyed patrons in the ruling class who have promoted illegal immigration and open borders are beyond contempt. They have a passion for people who break our laws that they never show actual US citizens. In the end, they are directly responsible for the importation of vicious, violent street gangs and the cartels, who have become the key domestic links for drug distribution, sex trafficking, and smuggling.
“Showing up,” getting organized, and getting in the faces of our elected officials at every level is the only solution for liberty-loving citizens. They alone can be the spark plugs to a national pushback against the death, crime, and madness caused by the open-border fanatics.
