Fentanyl smuggling is funded by U.S. consumers and drug cartels continue to bank off American citizens and hire U.S. citizens to smuggle drugs across the border, according to a study by CATO Institute.
"We tried this with heroin, we tried this with marijuana and nothing changes," said David Bier from CATO Institute. "Ultimately, the solution to the drug policy problem in the United States is not going to come through more border enforcement."
In 2021, U.S. citizens were 86.3 percent of convicted fentanyl drug traffickers. The study shows that drugs come through ports of entry, and smugglers are 97 percent less likely to be stopped than people crossing illegally between them.
Bier says that the demand for drugs is now so high and doesn't believe laws and enforcement across the U.S. is making a difference.
"No one is willing to focus on solutions trying to get these people off the streets and into facilities, where they can manage their pain in an effective way that is not about addiction and not about reaching out to dangerous criminals to get treatment," said Bier.
Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations and making the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) to take action.
“Fentanyl is a clandestine killer, and Texans are falling victim to the Mexican cartels that are producing it,” said Governor Abbott. “Cartels
are terrorists, and it’s time we treated them that way. In fact, more Americans died from Fentanyl poisoning in the past year than all terrorist attacks across the globe in the past 100 years. In order to save our country, particularly our next generation, we must do more to get Fentanyl off our streets.”
The Governor also sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris requesting federal terrorist classifications for the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel, as well as other cartels producing and distributing deadly fentanyl.
Governor Abbott is purposing a law that would call Fentanyl overdoses a poising that way they could place murder charges on those who distribute the drug.
DPS says they have seized over 336 million 'lethal doses' of fentanyl during Operation Lone Star.
David Beir believes Fentanyl smuggling is not a reason to end asylum. Just 279 of 1.8 million
arrests by Border Patrol of illegal crossing resulted in a Fentanyl seizure.
"The only appropriate response to the opioid epidemic is treatment of addiction," The CATO study says. "But for this to be possible, the government must adopt policies that facilitate treatment and reduce the harms from addiction—most importantly deaths. To develop these policies, policymakers need to ignore the calls to blame foreigners for our problems."
