Tag Archives: fentanyl

Dealing with China  

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 Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D   harropcrew1@gmail.com

It should be obvious to any clear-thinking American that China is our biggest threat. During the 1930’s there were many American leaders who refused to recognize the threat posed by Nazi Germany. We cannot allow that to happen again. Just like Nazi Germany, China is rapidly building their military capability while we focus on DEI and woke ideology in our armed forces.

What makes the China threat even greater than Nazi Germany is the degree to which our country is increasingly dependent on Chinese products for our existence. A recent report showed that 75 % of items sold on Amazon are manufactured in China. Similarly, at Walmart the figure is 70-80%. What allowed us to defeat Nazi Germany in large part was the industrial manufacturing capacity of our country to not only arm ourselves, but our allies as well. We were rightfully called the Arsenal of Democracy. Now we are not only losing our manufacturing advantage over China, but we are paying for their military expansion by the profits they make on the products they sell to us. We are funding our own potential destruction.

The most glaring example of this absurdity is “Green Energy.” The Biden regime, uses government taxpayer subsidies and mandates to build solar panels and wind mills that we buy from China, and they turn around and take the profits and build coal fired plants that provide them with abundant cheap energy. Some of the morons in our military have proposed electric powered tanks to replace diesel power! Where do we get most lithium batteries? You guessed it: China.

China is expanding its influence around the world. They are funding ports and infrastructure projects in Asia, Africa, and South America. They are taking over the South China Sea by building island bases. They are threatening the Philippines and our other allies in the region. What is the Biden regime’s answer to all this? Silence.

What we should be doing is recognizing we are in a cold war with China and act accordingly. Restore our manufacturing capacity, impose tariffs as needed, and build our defense capability such as the so-called iron dome which would provide a protection against not only missiles from China, but other bad actors, like North Korea and Iran. Peace can only be secured through strength and resolve. No more allowing China to own land anywhere in the United States. Stop the admission of Chinese students and Chinese funding of our colleges and universities. The flood of single Chinese men over our southern border must be reversed, as also, the fentanyl crisis. We need an administration that recognizes the threat and has the courage to act accordingly. The upcoming election will determine whether we will get one.

 

This Is How You Secure The Border

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On Tuesday, The Epoch Times posted an article about what has happened on the Texas-Mexico border since Governor Abbott implemented his state-level border security mission.

The article reports:

According to a statement released by Mr. Abbott’s office on June 14, the initiative has resulted in a 74 percent decrease in immigrants crossing into the state illegally in Texas since Operation Lone Star was launched in March 2021.

As part of the initiative, the Republican governor has deployed floating border barriers, installed wire fencing, and used the Texas National Guard to stem the flow of illegal immigrants.

Since the program was launched, the multi-agency effort has led to nearly 514,000 illegal immigrant apprehensions and more than 44,000 criminal arrests, with more than 38,600 felony charges, the statement said.

His office also emphasizes that law enforcement officials have seized over 489 million lethal doses of the synthetic opioid fentanyl during this period, noting the quantity seized is enough to “kill every man, woman, and child in the United States and Mexico combined.”

If closing the border is that simple, why are the politicians in Washington leaving it open? It is open because the uni-party in Washington wants it open. The influx of illegals provides cheap labor for the Republican corporate types and future voters for the Democrats. Many American voters have realized that the Democrat party does not represent mainstream America, so the Democrat party is importing new voters. The Republican corporate types are so greedy (and possibly too dumb) to see the danger and put a stop to the open border.

The article notes:

The Republican governor, meanwhile, criticized the Biden administration for its poor handling of the border situation, saying the new border executive order President Joe Biden signed earlier this month “will do little to stem the flow of illegal immigration into the country.”

“As long as the Biden Administration refuses to provide any type of enforcement, any type of blockage, of people crossing illegally, all that this new Biden policy is going to do is to actually attract and invite even more people to cross the border illegally,” he said in the statement, citing his appearance on Fox News.

Mr. Abbott referred to President Biden’s new executive order suspending asylum requests at certain times to deter illegal border crossings.

Medical Marijuana: Benefit or Slippery Slope?

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Author:  R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

Well, here we go again. The N.C. General Assembly may be considering making marijuana legal for medical use, which they declined to approve in the last session. Apparently enough people in North Carolina (or at least in the General Assembly) are pushing this idea so that it keeps coming up. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of medical marijuana. It should be noted that medical marijuana is legal in 38 states and the District of Columbia.

There is surprisingly little valid scientific research on the health benefits of marijuana. Most of what is claimed is based on anecdotal reports or small studies on short term benefits. Some of the claims are that it relieves nausea caused by some cancer treatments, relief of chronic pain, although not severe pain such as from surgery or broken bones, epilepsy and seizures, Alzheimer disease symptoms, HIV/Aids, and Crohn’s disease. Marijuana has over 100 different chemicals, so it is difficult to isolate the beneficial elements for each disorder. CBD is alleged to have positive effects on health while THC produces the euphoria or high that people experience. It should also be noted that marijuana is used to treat the symptoms of a medical condition, not the cause of that condition. Another important issue is whether there already exist legal drugs or treatments that patients can readily access that address these symptoms.

There are also negative effects. Because marijuana is a mind altering substance, changed perception and reaction times can negatively affect things like driving, leading to more injuries and deaths. Children can be especially harmed if they access marijuana, particularly ingestible forms such as gummy bears, cookies, brownies, etc. Although the long term impacts are not clearly understood, cognitive thinking ability and memory declines are documented for all ages. Confusion, poor muscle coordination, and dizziness are common. Motivation to lead a rewarding traditional life of work, family, and associated rewards often deteriorates, leading to nonproductive citizens. No society can flourish with large numbers of citizens addicted to drugs. Of course, the euphoria induced by marijuana is strongly related to its addictive potential and especially to its role as a gateway drug that leads the user to more potent drugs such as meth or heroin. Having worked in the N.C. Department of Correction as the Mental Health Services Director, I can testify to the numerous cases of criminal behavior in pursuit of illegal drugs that started with smoking marijuana. Interestingly, the FDA has not approved marijuana for general medical use except lab produced Epidiolex, Marinol and Cesamet to treat nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy, and low appetite for HIV patients.

Recent reports of the dramatic increase of China’s role in the marijuana trade adds another risk that should concern us all. There is increasing evidence that Chinese invaders are controlling the production and distribution of marijuana from California to Maine. They grow it and distribute it throughout the country, relying on the increased flow of illegal Chinese over our southern border for laborers. The Chinese are also the originators of the fentanyl crisis that is killing somewhere near 100,000 Americans each year. Now what could possibly go wrong with our biggest adversary, China, controlling marijuana and fentanyl production which can produce a deadly combination? Are we on a path of self-destruction? It makes one wonder. Twenty four states that started with medical marijuana have now legalized its recreational use. Result: 20% of the US population now report using marijuana. So if you think using marijuana is a good thing, then support medical marijuana since that is what is most likely to occur. Personally, I do not.

You Don’t Have To Invade A Country To Destroy It

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There are two major problems caused by our currently porous southern border–how to care for all of the people entering America illegally and the wreckage caused by the drugs coming across the border. The havoc caused by those drugs is often overlooked, but it has impacted a lot of families in America.

On Wednesday, The U.K. Daily Mail reported the following:

  • Beijing fuels America’s fentanyl crisis by subsidizing manufacture of drugs 
  • China’s leaders even tip off dodgy firms being investigated by US agencies 

The article notes:

China‘s leaders give tax breaks to companies that produce fentanyl chemicals and cause some 80,000 US overdose deaths each year, a damning House report warns.

Beijing is fueling America’s fentanyl crisis by subsidizing the manufacture of materials used by traffickers to make pills outside the country, say papers from a committee on China.

Researchers accessed a government website that revealed tax rebates for the production of specific fentanyl precursors and other synthetics — as long as those companies sell them outside of China.

‘Through its actions, as our report has revealed, the Chinese Communist Party is telling us that it wants more fentanyl entering our country,’ said Rep Mike Gallagher, the Republican chairman of the special House committee.

Admittedly, this wouldn’t be an issue if there were not a market for the drugs, but this is a major problem for America both now and in the future.

The article concludes:

The groundwork for the US fentanyl epidemic was laid more than 20 years ago, with aggressive over-prescribing of the synthetic opioid oxycodone.

As US authorities clamped down on its prescription, users moved to heroin, which the Sinaloa cartel happily supplied.

But making its own fentanyl — far more potent and versatile than heroin — in small, easily concealed labs was a game changer.

The cartel went from its first makeshift fentanyl lab to a network of labs concentrated in the northern state of Sinaloa in less than a decade.

A single cartel ‘cook’ can press fentanyl into 100,000 counterfeit pills every day to fool Americans into thinking they’re taking Xanax, Percocet or oxycodone.

The pills are smuggled over the border to supply drug addicts across the US, including the homeless users seen stumbling around on the streets of San Francisco, New York and other big cities.

Fentanyl is so cheap to make that the cartel reaps massive profits even wholesaling the drug at 50 cents per pill, investigators say.

The drug’s potency makes it particularly dangerous.

The narcotic dose of fentanyl is so close to the lethal dose that a pill meant to ensure a high for a habituated user can easily kill a less experienced person taking something they didn’t know was fentanyl.

How many families have to be impacted by this drug before we seal our southern border?

Another Consequence Of Our Open Southern Border

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On April 16th, The Center for Immigration Studies posted an article about the infiltration of the Mexican drug cartels into some American Indian reservations.

The article reports:

On April 10, I joined three tribal leaders at a hearing held by the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources to examine the threat to Indian Country communities posed by foreign drug cartels. Those leaders expressed alarm at how Mexican drug cartels have rapidly established a foothold on drug trafficking and other criminal activities in their communities, and they literally braved death threats to appear at the hearing.

Representatives of two tribes in Montana and one from Arizona implored Congress and federal agencies to prioritize the well-being of the citizens in Indian Country by securing the border and providing resources to help them eradicate the cartels. Said Jeffrey Stiffarm, president of the Fort Belknap Indian Community: “It seems like [the feds] are more concerned about the immigrants coming across the border than concerned about what they’re doing here once they get here … and to me more importantly, the first people of this country they’re coming into.”

The Sinaloa cartel in particular has targeted several Indian reservations in northern Montana, including Blackfeet, Rocky Boy’s, Fort Belknap, and Fort Peck, for expansion of their drug-trafficking enterprise. They are attracted primarily by the opportunity of huge profit margins, as fentanyl pills can be sold for as much as $100, compared to three to five dollars in urban areas of the country. Other factors that work in the cartels’ favor are the remote geography, relative scarcity of law enforcement, and jurisdictional complications between tribal police and local and federal authorities.

According to tribal leaders, the cartel operatives can “blend in” to the native communities, and in some cases have “married in” to become embedded in the reservation community and to facilitate the recruitment of street-level dealers, who are often local people who become vulnerable to cartel control through addiction and substance abuse. The tribes have experienced a spike in sex trafficking, child abuse and neglect, domestic violence, and theft that they attribute to the burgeoning drug addiction problem fostered by the cartel. The week before the hearing, two residents of the Rocky Boy’s reservation were killed in what was described as a cartel hit.

Stiffarm stated that the Fort Belknap reservation police deal with cartel-related crime on a daily basis, but they generally have no jurisdiction over non-tribe members, and the cartels know it. Federal authorities, including Border Patrol, ICE, and the FBI are rarely present on these tribal lands. Verlon Jose, chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation, lamented that “the feds don’t follow their own mandates” to enforce immigration and other federal laws, and that his tribe, which is located on the U.S. southern border, spends half of its law enforcement budget on border-related crime, including investigating everything from the deaths of crossers to stolen property.

A lot of our law-enforcement problems could be solved very quickly simply by closing the southern border to all but legal immigrants.

America First: Military Defense Part II

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

This is a follow-up to a prior article where I outlined how our foreign policy should return to the principle of America First, which was advocated by our Founding Fathers. This article focuses on specific actions that should be taken for our defense. While I am admittedly not a military planning expert, these suggestions are based on common sense; a characteristic sorely missing in many of our current defense leadership who seem more focused on their “woke” agenda.

We are living in a dangerous time. During the Cold War, we only had to worry about the Soviet Union from the standpoint of nuclear conflict. Now with China, Russia, North Korea, Pakistan, and soon Iran, having nuclear capability, the situation is far more complex and dangerous. First: one of the things that President Reagan wisely did was to encourage the development of an effective missile defense system. This was not continued by subsequent administrations. We need to return to developing a missile defense system. If we don’t, we will be at the mercy of any rogue country that decides to launch an attack. Second: we need to establish a satellite defense system that will protect our essential satellites without which a modern war cannot be fought. President Trump’s decision to create an effective Space Force needs to be strongly supported. Third: we need to fortify and secure our electrical power grid from sabotage or direct attack. This must also include protecting the computer programs that control these systems. One of the dumbest proposals from the Left is offshore wind farms. I cannot think of anything more vulnerable than a power system fifty miles away from our shores. Fourth, we need to consolidate our current military forces. According to a recent article in the Epoch Times, we have over 200,000 military personnel scattered all over the globe. We need to refocus these deployments and encourage our allies to support their own defenses. Europe, South Korea, and Japan for example, should not be relying on us for their defense. We are 34 trillion dollars in debt!. Fifth, we need to focus on ensuring that we have the strongest Navy in the world. We should use this force as needed and then return them to proximity to our shores where their vulnerability to attack is lessoned as compared to stationing naval fleets all over the world. Sixth, we need to return to the principle contained in the Monroe Doctrine that declared the Western Hemisphere to be off limits to our adversaries. Allowing China to infiltrate countries like Venezuela and Ecuador is contrary to our interests.

The last item is dealing with the drug cartels in Mexico. The weaponization of mass illegal migration, is a direct threat of our survival as a country. The influx of fentanyl is estimated to kill 100,000 Americans each year and is now the greatest cause of death of American men between the age of 19 and 45. We fought terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq. When are we going to get serious and destroy the drug cartels? That is a fight worth having.

The above will require a refocusing of our defense efforts. However, continuing what we have been doing is no longer tenable.

Peter Schweizer Has A New Book Out

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Peter Schweizer is one of the few investigative reporters left. He has a new book out, Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans. The book is carefully researched and footnoted.  It’s available on Amazon and other places. On Tuesday, Breitbart posted an article about the book.

The article reports:

The Biden family bagged $5 million from the business partner of the “White Wolf,” a Chinese criminal gang leader who helped create the fentanyl pipeline now decimating the United States, Peter Schweizer detailed in his new book, Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans.

While Joe Biden was vice president, the Bidens developed a business partnership with a Chinese tycoon named Ye Jianming, the chairman of CEFC China Energy Co., which had strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Throughout Ye’s relationship with the Bidens, he “showered” some members of the Biden family with money, Schweizer reported. Hunter Biden received a three-carat diamond worth $80,000; and in July 2017, Ye’s company gave the Bidens a $5 million, interest-free, forgivable loan.

Schweizer previously detailed the $5 million in his book Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, as reported by Kristina Wong:

Furthermore, by July 2017, CEFC began making interest-free, forgivable loans to the Biden family. CEFC executive Zhao Running wrote that $5 million was intended as money lent to “the BD family,” not just Hunter Biden.

“This $5 million loan to the BD [Biden] family is interest free,” Zhao wrote.

Schweizer notes that “interest-free loans provide tremendous leverage because the lender can demand its money back if it is displeased by any action.”

Hunter spoke to Ye on a “regular basis” and Ye helped Hunter “on a number of his personal issues” including unspecified “sensitive things,” Hunter explained in emails. Joe Biden also attended a meeting with Hunter, additional business partners, and Ye, Hunter’s business partner Rob Walker told U.S. House of Representative investigators in 2023. “I don’t remember the exact time, but I remember being in Washington, DC, and the former vice president stopped by. We were having lunch,” Walker testified.

But Ye also enjoyed a partnership with the former leader of a Chinese triad called the United Bamboo Gang (UBG), Schweizer detailed in Blood Money.  Ye’s partner’s name was Zhang Anle or, as he is commonly known, the “White Wolf.”

This is a very interesting book.

The Consequences Have Arrived

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On Tuesday, The Conservative Review posted an article detailing what has happened in Oregon as a result of decriminalizing the possession of hard drugs such as heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine in 2020.

The article reports:

Oregon became the first state in the union to decriminalize possession of hard drugs such as heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine in 2020. This radical experiment in lawlessness has been an unmitigated disaster.

While initially deaf to the concerns raised by Republicans, recovery specialists, and Christian groups concerning Ballot Measure 110, state Democrats are now poised to re-criminalize drug possession and bring their four-year experiment to an end. After all, the majority of Oregonians want the measure repealed.

…The so-called “Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act” eliminated criminal penalties for possession of various quantities of hard drugs. As a result, junkies can now carry one gram of heroin; 2 grams of cocaine; 2 grams of meth; less than 40 user units of methadone; 1 gram or 5 pills of MDMA; less than 40 user units of LSD; and fewer than 40 pills of oxycodone.

Possession of such quantities amounts to a non-criminal Class E violation, which at most can result in a $100 fine or a recommendation for a health assessment with an addiction treatment professional.

Those caught with even more of these once-controlled substances have also seen penalties softened, such that they now face a misdemeanor charge with less than a year in jail, a fine, or both.

Extra to decriminalizing hard drugs, the measure mandated the establishment or funding of recovery centers throughout the state funded by taxes on marijuana.

The article lists the results of the law:

According to Oregon Health Authority data, fatal overdoses have skyrocketed in recent years. In 2020, there were 824 fatal overdoses. The year M110 went into effect, there were 1,189 fatal overdoses. Preliminary data indicates the number of deaths from overdoses in 2022 was north of 1,100.

Fentanyl is proving especially lethal. OregonLive.com noted that in the year ending September 2019, there were 77 known fentanyl deaths. In the year ending September 2023, there were reportedly 1,268 overdose deaths.

There appears to be a correlation between fatal overdoses and M110.

Please follow the link for further details and possible solutions. This really should not be a Republican/Democrat or Liberal/Conservative issue. I believe all of us want to protect our children and young adults from the dangers of hard drugs. Hopefully Oregon will pass a law that moves the state in that direction.

What An Open Border Means To America

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On Sunday,  American Greatness posted an article about the consequences of America’s open southern border.

The article reports:

The Biden administration has opened the United States’ border, and this has fundamentally threatened America’s national security in ways not felt since the early days of WWII.  The implications of this open border are numerous and multifaceted.  As should be expected, when a state does not enforce its sovereignty at its border, anyone can enter and do so anonymously.  In this population of the many, many millions of people who have illegally crossed the border, there are—with certainty—criminals, agents of foreign powers, which undoubtedly include intelligence agents, potential saboteurs, soldiers, special operators, terrorists, and terrorist sympathizers.  Also entering the U.S. are human traffickers and narcotics of every type, including fentanyl and other even more potent synthetic opioids and other drugs.  In an era of COVID-19, the mass migration of people inevitably includes diseases, parasites, and potentially the next pandemic that will further stress the hospitals and health systems of the country.

America’s enemies must be thanking their lucky stars that Biden has essentially invited and welcomed into the U.S. anyone who can make it.  The Biden administration has given America’s enemies the very tools they need to undermine the U.S. from within.  Throughout history, America has fought its major wars with a secure homefront.  Even with a population of immigrants, it was difficult for our enemies in Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union to infiltrate American society for two reasons: first, because America policed its borders and protected its citizens; and second, because of the inherent patriotism that Americans, even from these very same nations, felt towards their new adopted home.  The same cannot be said for today, as we do not know who is in the U.S., nor do we have the same sense of patriotic responsibility as we did a half a century ago.  Now, it is reasonable to believe that some of these unvetted aliens may be here to serve as a fifth column.

I don’t like the conclusions drawn in this article, but I really can’t refute them.

The article concludes:

Biden’s open border policy is an existential national security threat because now tyranny knows that the door is open.  Tyranny, even if it has an American face, will follow a sadly familiar trajectory.  What will happen in the United States is what has occurred on the path to every tyranny: once the tyrant knows that there is no effective opposition, he will keep pushing until he has absolute control.  Today’s open border will segue soon into other issues, compelling the American people to yield.  Permanent one-party control will be the result, which will soon elide into tyrannical rule.  The American Republic will be lost.  What the Biden administration has done is appalling and in hostile opposition to America’s history and American political ideology, culture, values, principles, and traditions.  The new Republican leadership in the House of Representatives and state officials, as in Texas, have to employ every measure they can to stop this lawlessness—everything is at stake.

How many military-aged men have crossed our border in recent years? How many of those men had addresses in their pockets telling them where to report? Are militias being formed right under our noses? Thank God for the Second Amendment. It may be our only hope.

But It Looked Really Good On Paper

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On Monday, Hot Air posted an article about Measure 110, passed in Oregon in 2020. The law decriminalized the possession and use of small quantities of virtually all hard drugs, including heroin, fentanyl, and methamphetamines. The idea of the law was to change the focus from jailtime to rehabilitation.

The article reports:

The results of this move have been spectacular, provided you were hoping for it to be spectacularly bad. Particularly in cities like Portland, citizens are unable to walk the streets without tripping over addicts who are shooting up or passed out on the sidewalk. This reality has an increasing number of people rethinking the policy and talk of repealing Measure 110 is growing. (Associated Press)

…Decriminalization has now been attempted in multiple American cities and it has failed every single time. There isn’t one place you can point to where decriminalization has resulted in fewer overdose deaths and more people recovering in treatment programs. The opposite is what has happened.

Republicans in Oregon are reportedly pushing the Governor to call a special session to repeal the measure and criminalize both possession and public drug use. They are also asking for rehabilitation treatment to be mandatory instead of voluntary as it is now. The second part of that proposal is probably doomed to failure, however. It’s almost impossible to force someone into an addiction treatment program if they aren’t ready to seek help for themselves. If you do that, they’ll probably just be biding their time until they are released and can go search for their next fix.

Every parent knows that it is easier to ignore your child’s bad behavior than to deal with it. However, at some point you have to deal with it and the sooner you deal with it, the easier it will be. Somehow our ‘public servants’ have never grasped this concept.

The article concludes:

This was always predictable, or at least it should have been. When you remove the disincentive for a particular behavior and make it easier to engage in that behavior, you’re going to wind up with more of it. Given the addictive nature of the drugs in question, once the line has been crossed it’s very difficult to walk it back. The rise in homelessness was also a predictable result. If people with jobs become addicted to opioids, their performance at work will begin to go downhill. When they eventually lose their jobs, they have little else to occupy their time beyond looking to score drugs. Unable to pay the rent, they eventually wind up out in the street. This really shouldn’t be confusing to any of these politicians. The only question now is whether they can find the intestinal fortitude to admit their error and try to put the state back on an even keel.

Let’s learn from out mistakes!

 

 

Taking Out The Cartels   

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Author:  R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D      

Israel is again fighting for their existence against a terrorist force that not only wants to eliminate the state of Israel but also all Jews. Hamas has been acquiring advanced weapons, principally from Iran, for several years. When your enemy arms itself it never turns out well. The situation with the so-called drug cartels is similar in a lot of ways.   Let’s take a look at our options to deal with them. 

First, we need to recognize the threat that the drug cartels present to our country.   Estimates are that over 100,000 of our citizens die each year due to drug overdosing–especially fentanyl.  At that rate we will have over one million drug deaths within 10 years.  In comparison, there were 36,634 Americans killed during the Korean War and 56,220 Americans killed in Vietnam. During the Vietnam War, there were massive protests throughout this country. Where are the protests against the drug cartels, and what is happening as a direct result of Biden’s open border policy? I am certain that we all have friends or family members that have been impacted by drug overdose deaths.  Just because it happens individually does not minimize the threat to our country. Most of these lethal drugs are manufactured and smuggled into our country by the drug cartels. The second obvious threat from the drug cartels is their encouragement, control and profiting from illegal immigration. The amount of money they are making is staggering. Estimates are that over 8 million illegals have come over the border since Biden took office. This is more people than 38 of our 50 states!  At an estimated $6,000 dollars profit on each illegal that they funnel across our border; that amounts to billions of dollars to the drug cartels. Much of this money is used to purchase weapons that are making the cartels a formidable fighting force. The recent attack on a Mexican police station killing half of their personnel shows where this is going.   

So, what do we do about it? Clearly, the Biden administration intends to do nothing.  First we must secure our border. Second, during his administration, President Trump was able to coerce the Mexican government to deploy 26,000 of their troops on their side of the southern border. Clearly, the Mexican government has no plans to do the same now. They are facilitating this problem, not helping to correct it. Do we have a right and duty to protect our country from what is actually an invasion? Of course we do, but sadly it will not be done unless Biden is replaced.   

Assuming that happens, the Mexican government must be enlisted to assist with this problem. Unfortunately, it appears that the drug cartels have become so powerful that Mexico may not be able to deal with them even if they were motivated to do so. This may require our sending American forces to put an end to the drug cartels. Remember these cartels have members that have infiltrated into our southern states and other areas in the country. There is a precedent for this from 1915, when President Wilson authorized the sending of American troops into Mexico under General John J. Pershing to deal with the threat from Poncho Villa. Dealing with this current threat without sending our troops is preferable, but Mexico needs to get the message that either they deal with it or we will be forced to.    

Israel has learned a lesson from the Hamas attack; we must do likewise.   

The Scourge Of Fentanyl

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On Friday, The U.K. Daily Mail reported that Joanne Marian Segovia, 64, the executive director of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, has been charged with attempting to unlawfully import valeryl fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.

The article reports:

Starting in 2015, Segovia had at least 61 drug shipments mailed to her San Jose home from India, Hong Kong, Hungary and Singapore with manifests that listed their contents as ‘wedding party favors,’ ‘gift makeup,’ ‘chocolate and sweets’ and ‘food supplement,’ according to a federal criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday.

In at least once instance she is accused of using her work computer and address and the police union’s UPS account to ship the drugs within the U.S.

Tom Saggau, a spokesperson for the police union in San Jose, said Segovia has worked for the union since 2003, planning funerals for officers who die in the line of duty, being the liaison between the department and the officers’ families and organizing office festivities and fundraisers.

He said that federal officials informed the union last Friday that Segovia was under investigation and that no one else at the union was involved or knew about Segovia’s alleged acts.

The revelation shocked her colleagues, Saggau said.

‘We didn’t have any reason to suspect her,’ he said, adding that the union’s board of directors has pledged to fully support the federal investigation.

Federal prosecutors said that in 2019, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers intercepted a parcel being sent to her home address that contained $5,000 worth of Tramadol, a synthetic opioid, and sent her a letter telling her they were seizing the pills. 

The next year, the CBP again intercepted a shipment of Tramadol valued at $700 and sent her a seizure letter, court records showed.

But federal officials didn’t start investigating Segovia until last year when investigators found her name and home address on the cellphone of a suspected drug dealer who is part of a network that ships controlled substances made in India to the San Francisco Bay Area, according to the complaint. 

The article concludes:

Fentanyl has now infected almost every major city in America, turning once-thriving streets in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia into wastelands.

Scenes of zombified addicts shooting up or smoking the drug in front of children increasingly becoming a part of everyday life.

Many people who die of overdoses do not know they are taking fentanyl and the drug has partially been blamed for America’s sharp decline in life-expectancy.

Experts have described the drop in life expectancy from 78.8 in 2019 to 76.4 in 2021 as ‘dramatic’ and ‘substantial’.

Officials in Washington state have said that they’ve run out of space in morgues and crematoriums as the drug tears through local communities.

We need harsh penalties for drug dealers and treatment programs for addicts. However, the problem with treatment programs is that they don’t work unless the person is willing to let go of their drug habit.

The Party Of Parents?

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On Sunday, The Daily Caller posted an article with the following headline:

JOSH HAMMER: The New GOP Is The Party Of Parents

The article notes the shift in recent years in the Republican party toward the party of working people and parents.

The article reports:

Some recent examples hint that the GOP may be moving beyond mere rhetorical platitude, and into the realm of concrete policy and action.

The No. 1 killer today of Americans aged 18-45 years old is fentanyl trafficked by Mexican drug cartels, as some Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans pointed out this week during a hearing with hapless Attorney General Merrick Garland. A recent Axios-Ipsos poll showed that a 37% plurality of Republicans surveyed consider opioids and fentanyl to be the single greatest threat to U.S. public health, and at least some in the party are coming around to acting accordingly. Besides securing the U.S.-Mexico border once and for all, perhaps the other single most effective action the federal government could take on this front would be to formally designate the cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Last month, a coalition of 21 red-state attorneys general sent a formal letter to President Joe Biden, exhorting him to instruct his State Department to do precisely that.

…The fights against transgender surgeries for minors and Big Tech addiction are two other powerful examples of what a more hands-on, culturally pugnacious, parents- and children-first GOP can, and should, prioritize. Whereas the older, corporate-centric GOP was a party of “openness” and eschewed using statecraft to impose limitations, the newer, parents- and children-centric GOP must embrace the more frequent imposition of legal limitations and outright bans in the name of the common good.

Just this week, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves made the Magnolia State the eighth to fully ban “gender-affirming care” procedures for minors. On Thursday, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee made the Volunteer State the first state to affirmatively ban drag shows in the presence of minors. (In Florida, DeSantis has at times revoked liquor licenses for venues hosting drag shows with minors.) And at the federal level, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has pushed for an investigation of The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital after a whistleblower provided viscerally shocking details to Bari Weiss’s The Free Press last month. Hawley’s related post-whistleblower Protecting Our Kids from Child Abuse Act would helpfully create a private right of action for individuals who were harmed by “gender-affirming care” when they were minors.

It’s time for common sense to make a comeback and end some of the harmful things that have invaded our culture. I think most Americans still believe that what a person does in their own bedroom is their business, but when people try to push their non-mainstream views into the mainstream, parents and other people need to object.

Resisting Communist China

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

Let’s face the facts. The very unwise effort by the U.S. Government over the past 40 years to undermine communism in China by granting them economic privileges and favored nation status has been a disaster. The naïve politicians , who fostered this absurd policy included Democrats and Republicans such as
Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, George Bush (both), Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and worst of all Joe Biden. As a result, communist China is arguably the strongest country on earth economically and militarily. And we funded them!

The question is what do we do now? First, we have to recognize that President  Biden is a compromised president who is being unduly influenced by Communist China. As a result, he does not put America first. Several examples such as the $60 million given to the U. of Pennsylvania where Biden set up an ancillary office after he left the Vice Presidency in 2017 (where classified documents have been found), his son, Hunter, receiving millions of dollars in money from Communist China for his scam “business” deals and passing it on to Joe by paying a reported $50,000. per month for renting one of Joe’s homes.. Money laundering straight out of the Mafia playbook! What do we do about it while we wait the outcome of the 2024 election?

Governor DeSantis of Florida is again leading the way. He recently announced that he will be working with the legislature to pass a law that would ban Communist China (and any phantom corporate entity) from purchasing real estate, especially agricultural land in Florida. North Carolina should follow suit. A couple of years ago, Smithfield Foods was purchased by a Chinese group centered in Hong Kong. Why on earth would we allow a communist adversary to purchase a main component of our food chain? Insanity if you ask me.

Another issue is Communist China supplying the chemicals to the drug cartels to produce fentanyl which is then smuggled into the United States and has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans over the past few years What are we doing about it? Compromised Joe Biden is doing nothing. In fact, his open border policy is facilitating this death drug. The U.S. Government should be imposing the severest of trade sanctions on Communist China until this is stopped. . Try starting with stopping the export of U.S. coal to China. That
would get their attention!

The final thing is Communist China giving grants to higher education institutions in this country and allowing Chinese citizens to work here on research projects that have high technological value. No Communist
Chinese grants should be allowed into in this country. You know they will want a return on their investment that will be detrimental to American safety, security and technological advancement...

These are some things that need to be done immediately. If you agree, contact your appropriate elected officials and demand action before it is too late.

Be Careful On Halloween

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On Wednesday, Townhall reported that federal agents and New York City police officers had stopped a car in the Lincoln Tunnel containing 15,000 “multicolored” fentanyl pills and had an estimated street value of $300,000, according to WPVI. Letitia Bush was arrested.

The article reports:

Reportedly, Bush was in the backseat of the vehicle when police and agents showed up. She had two black tote bags and a yellow LEGO container. Inside the LEGO container were “brick shaped” packages covered in black tape next to LEGO blocks. Inside the black-taped packages contained the “rainbow” fentanyl pills, which were reportedly imprinted with “30 M” to resemble 30mg oxycodone hydrochloride pills. 

New York City’s Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan warned that the pills “look like candy” and began showing up on the West Coast earlier this year. 

Frank Tarentino, the special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York Division said that the pills are similar-looking to “party drugs” and are “everywhere.” 

“Rainbow fentanyl is a clear and present danger and it is here in New York City,” Tarentino said to Fox 5. “Approximately forty percent of the pills we analyze in our lab contain a lethal dose.”

The article concludes:

Last month, Townhall covered how a California middle schooler was arrested after bringing 150 fentanyl pills  disguised as Percocet to school. The student’s pills caused a campus supervisor to overdose. 

The supervisor came into contact with the drug when they searched the student’s belongings after they were involved in an altercation with another student at school. Police were en route to the school as the overdose occurred. Police who arrived on the scene administered Narcan to the supervisor, who survived.

Like it or not, we live in a world where taking any pill that is not out of a prescription bottle with your name on it can be deadly. Please tell your children not to accept even an aspirin from a friend. On Halloween, my family will be giving out chocolate. Hopefully no one is creating drugs that look like chocolate bars.

The Southern Border And The Drug Problem

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On September 7, Judicial Watch posted an article about the amount of fentanyl currently coming into America through our porous southern border.

The article reports:

American federal agents have seized more than 10,500 pounds of the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl along the Mexican border this fiscal year with one U.S. border region seeing an astounding 323% increase in the last three years. The most recent Customs and Border Protection (CBP) figures also show that more than 148,000 pounds of methamphetamine, 54,000 pounds of cocaine, and 1,500 pounds of heroin have also been seized this fiscal year which ends in September. At this rate fentanyl is set to surpass last year’s seizures of 11,203 pounds, a stark reminder that illegal immigration is hardly the only threat along the southwest border.

CBP’s Air and Marine Operations (AMO) already shattered last year’s fentanyl record, snatching 1,108 pounds compared to 786 in all of 2021. The CBP division has about 1,800 federal agents, 240 aircraft and 300 marine vessels. The maritime and aviation law enforcement branch has also confiscated more than 151,000 pounds of cocaine, 51,000 pounds of marijuana 7,300 pounds of methamphetamines and 373 pounds of heroin this year. The record loads of fentanyl smuggled into the U.S. by Mexican drug cartels are especially worrisome because the synthetic opioid is 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 more potent than morphine, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the federal agency of around 10,000 charged with enforcing the nation’s controlled substances laws and regulations. “Fentanyl is the single deadliest drug threat our nation has ever encountered,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said recently. “From large cities to rural America, no community is safe from the presence of fentanyl.”

The agency also warns that Mexican drug cartels are driving up addiction among kids and young adults with “rainbow fentanyl,” pills and powder that come in bright colors and shapes similar to candy and blocks that resemble sidewalk chalk. Just a few weeks ago, federal agents in the Nogales, Arizona port of entry seized more than 15,000 colored fentanyl pills “with the appearance of candy.” CBP Nogales Director Michael Humphries said the candy appearance is a trend that targets youth. Most of the nation’s 107,622 drug overdoses in 2021 involved synthetic opioids like fentanyl, according to the Centers of Disease and Control and Prevention (CDC). The DEA says the majority of fentanyl in the U.S. is supplied by Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).

The article notes that San Diego is the epicenter of fentanyl trafficking in America.

The article concludes:

The U.S. government has long documented that Mexican drug cartels are the greatest criminal threat to the country. Federal authorities classify them as Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCO) and not even a global pandemic could slow them down. Cartels found a way to adjust to restrictions imposed by COVID-19 to flood the country with illicit drugs. Huge loads still reached communities around the nation as deaths and seizures rose sharply and Mexican TCO’s increased drug availability, according to the DEA’s National Drug Threat Assessment (NDTA). Nine Mexican TCOs have the greatest drug trafficking impact on the U.S., according to the DEA. Among them are the Sinaloa and Juárez cartels, Los Zetas, La Familia Michoacána, Los Rojos and Guerreros Unidos. The TCOs maintain drug distribution cells in cities across the U.S. that report to leaders in Mexico and dominate the nation’s drug market. In a Homeland Threat Assessment the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) explains that Mexican cartels pose the greatest threat to the U.S. because of their ability to control territory and co-opt parts of government, particularly at a state and local level. “They represent an acute and devastating threat to public health and safety in the Homeland and a significant threat to U.S. national security interests,” the DHS writes in the document.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. An open border is a continuing threat to everyone. An open border especially puts our young people at risk.

The Open Border Threatens Our Children

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The amount of fentanyl coming across our porous southern border is enough to kill millions of Americans. Now there is a new variant of fentanyl that could easily be used to kill our children.

NewsMax reported on Wednesday:

Sheriff’s deputies in Multnomah County, Oregon, recently executed a search warrant at an apartment in Northeast Portland and seized four grams of the “dangerous and more potent” multi-colored “rainbow” fentanyl powder, which could especially threaten children, the office said in a press release.

In addition to the powder, which deputies are concerned children could believe is candy or a toy, officers also recovered 800 pills of fentanyl, heroin, meth, body armor, guns, and $5,000 in cash, police said.

“We are partnering with Multnomah County health departments to sound the alarm,” Multnomah County Special Investigative Unit Sgt. Matt Ferguson said in a news release. “The public needs to be aware of the rising use of powdered fentanyl. We believe this is going to be the new trend seen on the streets of Portland.”

The article concludes:

The CDC reports that as many as 150 die from a fentanyl overdose in the country each day, and it is almost impossible to tell if other drugs are laced with it unless you have a test strip to see if it is present.

The powdered “rainbow” variety was also found by Monterey, California, police in July, and is believed to be coming up from Mexico.

In a post on social media, that police department advised parents to talk to their children about the potential dangers that even a small dose could mean.

“Sadly, we are now seeing Fentanyl in rainbow/candy coloring,” the post from July 9 said. “We encourage parents to speak with their children about the dangers of this deadly drug. Just one use can be fatal.”

An open southern border is a threat to every American.

One Consequence Of An Open Border

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On Saturday, Sharyl Attkisson posted an article about the increase in drug overdoses in America and the relationship between that increase and our open southern border.

The article reports:

The following is an excerpt from the Executive Summary of the Commission on Combatting Synthetic Opioid Trafficking.

Cumulatively, since 1999, drug overdoses have killed approximately 1 million Americans. That number exceeds the number of U.S. service members who have died in battle in all wars fought by the United States. Even worse is that the United States has never experienced the level of drug overdose fatalities seen right now.

In just the 12 months between June 2020 and May 2021, more than 100,000 Americans died from drug overdose—more than twice the number of U.S. traffic fatalities or gun-violence deaths during that period. Some two-thirds of these deaths—about 170 fatalities each day, primarily among those ages 18 to 45—involved synthetic opioids.

The primary driver of the opioid epidemic today is illicit fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times more potent than heroin.

In 2018, according to the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the cost of overdose fatalities was $696 billion, despite being roughly two-thirds of annual overdose deaths today. It is therefore reasonable to estimate that drug overdoses are now costing the United States approximately $1 trillion annually.

Given these fatalities, the Commission finds the trafficking of synthetic drugs into the United States to be not just a public health emergency but a national emergency that threatens both the national security and economic well-being of the country.

The article continues:

In less than a decade, illegal U.S. drug markets that were once dominated by diverted prescription opioids and heroin became saturated with illegally manufactured synthetic opioids. Some of these synthetic variants are cheaper and easier to produce than heroin making them attractive alternatives to criminals who lace them into heroin and other illicit drugs or press them into often-deadly counterfeit pills.

Mexico is the principal source of this illicit fentanyl and its analogues today. In Mexico, cartels manufacture these poisons in clandestine laboratories with ingredients—precursor chemicals—sourced largely from the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Because illicit fentanyl is so powerful and such a small amount goes such a long way, traffickers conceal hard-to-detect quantities in packages, in vehicles, and on persons and smuggle the drug across the U.S.–Mexico border.

It is difficult to interdict given that just a small physical amount of this potent drug is enough to satisfy U.S. demand, making it highly profitable for traffickers and dealers.

Indeed, the trafficking of synthetic opioids offers a more profitable alternative to heroin for Mexican drug traffickers. The Mexican government, in part out of self-preservation and in part because the trafficking problem transcends current law enforcement capacity, recently adopted a “hugs, not bullets” approach to managing the transnational criminal groups. However, such approaches have not been able to address trafficking issues, and further efforts will be needed.

The article concludes:

U.S. and Mexican efforts can disrupt the flow of synthetic opioids across U.S. borders, but real progress can come only by pairing illicit synthetic opioid supply disruption with decreasing the domestic U.S. demand for these drugs.

Congress established the Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking to examine the causes of the influx of synthetic opioids, to understand how to reduce the trafficking of these drugs, and to identify solutions to mitigate a worsening overdose death crisis.

The magnitude of this fast-moving problem and the unique challenges it presents will require a new and different national response across all levels of government and policy domains.

Read or download the entire commission report here.

In a sense, the drug problem has something in common with the current debate over abortion. Until we have a cultural change that makes marijuana (a gateway drug) use socially unacceptable, we will not be able to solve the drug crisis. Until we make abortion socially unacceptable, overturning Roe vs. Wade will only be a small step forward. Peer pressure is real, and it has a lot to do with the drug problem in America. As long as teenagers and young adults believe it is cool to smoke marijuana, a percentage of those teenagers and young adults will go on to more dangerous drugs. In the past thirty years, we have seen the cultural change in the area of cigarette smoking. Smoking in a restaurant thirty years ago was acceptable, now it simply does not happen. We need to make similar changes in the areas of drug use and abortion.

This Doesn’t Make Me Feel Safe

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On April 12th, Breitbart reported that five sexual predators were arrested last week in the West Texas Border Sector of our Southern Border.

The article reports:

Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Jason D. Owens tweeted this week about the arrest of a previously convicted sex offender. The Mexican national attempted to hide in a group of 15 migrants who illegally crossed the border on April 5. The man identified by CBP officials as Honorio Santa Maria-Vasquez has a 2009 conviction from a court in Indiana for sexual misconduct with a minor.

…Earlier that day, Carrizo Springs Station agents arrested another group of seven migrants attempting to sneak into the U.S. interior. During processing, agents identified a Guatemalan national, Selvin Danilo Chocooj-Boztoc as a criminal alien with a conviction in Washington State for forcible sex abuse in the 3rd degree from 2018.

…On April 9, Chief Owens reported that the Mexican government extradited Braulio Davila and turned them over to agents from the Del Rio Sector Foreign Operations Branch. Davila, a sex offender, has an active warrant out of Pecos County, Texas.

…Shortly after midnight on the morning of April 4, Eagle Pass Station agents apprehended a group of three migrants who had just crossed the border into Texas. During a records check, agents identified a Guatemalan man, Delfidio Escobar-Guzman, 43, as a convicted sex offender. A Colorado court convicted the man for a “Sex offense in the 4th degree.”

Two days earlier, Brackettville Station agents found a group of nine migrants attempting to sneak around the immigration checkpoint by trespassing on a ranch. During processing, agents identified a Mexican national, Isais Hernandez-Ulin, 38, as a criminal alien with a conviction from a North Carolina court for felony indecency with a child.

So far this fiscal year, which began on October 1, 2021, Del Rio Sector agents arrested more than 660 criminal aliens, officials stated.

There are a lot of reasons we need to seal our southern border. Criminals can easily mix in with the crowds coming across, fentanyl is coming across in record amounts, and there are numerous human rights abuses against the immigrants along the way. It’s time to finish the wall and enforce our laws.

What Happens At The Border Effects All Of Us

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On Wednesday, Townhall posted an article that illustrates how the crisis at America’s southern border effects all of us.

The article reports:

Think you live too far from the Mexican border to be hurt by the chaos there?

Bloomfield is a picturesque village in central Connecticut, 3,500 miles from the Mexican border. But illegal drugs flowing across that border nearly killed a 16-year-old student at Bloomfield High School two weeks ago. He tried marijuana, not knowing it was laced with fentanyl. Police rushed to the school nurse’s office and administered two doses of Narcan just in time to save him.

Responding to the surge in teen overdoses, Connecticut’s Gov. Ned Lamont is asking, “How did this happen? How is there more fentanyl on the streets than ever before?” Look south, Governor.

Hidalgo County, Texas, Sheriff J.E. Guerra, who operates on the frontlines of the border war, explained that he’s not worried drugs will impact his community. “The drugs go further north,” he said.

Drug thugs cross the border disguised as needy migrants or even unaccompanied minors. Once across, they’re provided bus and airplane tickets to destinations across the U.S. In some cases, charities — largely taxpayer-funded — pay for the tickets, and hand the border crossers cellphones and other items as they start their journeys north.

Other times, “Biden Air” flies migrants stealthily at night into places like Westchester County airport, close to the Connecticut border.

Once far north of the border, drug thugs are invading middle schools and high schools and killing our teens.

Unfortunately we are in a place where every child and every young adult needs to be told, “Don’t take any drug or any pill that is not from a bottle that has your name and a doctor’s prescription number on it!” Fentanyl is coming into America in record amounts because of the lack of security at our southern border. Recreational drug use is now Russian Roulette with your life.

What Were They Thinking?

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On Wednesday, Townhall reported that House Democrats blocked consideration of H.R. 6184, also called the Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl Act, which was offered by Reps. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) and Kat Cammack (R-FL).

The article reports:

The bill would have permanently placed fentanyl-related substances into Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, making it illegal to sell the molecularly-altered fentanyl substance manufactured by criminals, instead of its normal classification as a Schedule II under the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are “defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” The emergency class-wide scheduling order for fentanyl-related substances is set to expire on February 18. Fentanyl and related drugs, trafficked through the U.S.-Mexico border, are currently the leading cause of drug overdose deaths in the United States. Mexican drug cartels, using substances imported from China, have largely switched over to producing and trafficking fentanyl because it is not limited to a growing season and it is easier to smuggle through the ports of entry and between the ports of entry along the southern border.

Griffith’s bill would have granted researchers the ability to conduct studies on these substances.

“We recently learned from the CDC that between May 2020 and April 2021 more than a hundred thousand overdose deaths occurred in the United States – an increase of nearly 30 percent over the previous year…Because fentanyl has a proven medical use, it is considered a Schedule II narcotic, but elicit derivations of fentanyl, also called fentanyl-analogs or fentanyl-related substances, do not tend to demonstrate medical value,” said Griffith.

The article concludes:

Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, testified to members of Congress on Tuesday that due to Border Patrol agents being bogged down with processing family units and children who willingly give themselves up, they are unable to arrest the drug smugglers who are bringing in fentanyl between the ports of entry.

Fentanyl is killing Americans. It needs to be permanently placed on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, making it permanently  illegal to sell the drug. Fentanyl is one of the main reasons we need control of our southern border.

The Cost Of The Open Border

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On Saturday, The Epoch Times posted an article about the amount of fentanyl coming across our southern border.

The article reports:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has reported a 1,066 percent increase in fentanyl seized in south Texas ports during fiscal year 2021.

Border agents at eight ports of entry extending from Brownsville to Del Rio said that between Oct. 1, 2020, and Sept. 30, 2021, they seized 87,652 pounds of narcotics that would have commanded a combined estimated street value of $786 million, CBP reported on Jan. 5.

Of this, 41,713 pounds was marijuana, 8,592 pounds was cocaine, 33,777 pounds was methamphetamine, 1,215 pounds was heroin, and 588 pounds was fentanyl. That’s a 1,066 percent increase in fentanyl seizures, as well as a 98 percent increase in cocaine seizures, from the year prior.

They also reported having seized $10.4 million in unreported currency, 463 weapons—up 21 percent from FY 2020—and 84,863 rounds of ammunition.

The eight ports of entry comprise the Laredo Field Office. The CBP officers at these ports of entry also noted that in FY 2021, more than 20,701 non-U.S. citizens were inadmissible to the United States due to violations of immigration law.

Randy J. Howe, the Laredo Field Office’s director of field operations, said in a statement that despite significantly less traffic due to travel restrictions amid the COVID-19 pandemic, “the drug and contraband threat remained the same.”

“Our significant gains in fentanyl and cocaine seizures underscore the deadly nature of the contraband we encounter, the need to utilize Personal Protective Equipment to protect our officers and our continued resolve to carry out our vital border security mission,” he said.

An unsecured southern border is a national security threat because we have no idea who is crossing the border and a national health issue–because of the coronavirus and because of the Americans who have died because of fentanyl use.

The article concludes:

China is “the primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked through international mail and express consignment operations, as well as the main source for all fentanyl-related substances trafficked into the United States,” the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said in its 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment report (pdf).

A record number of Americans—more than 100,000—died of drug overdoses in the 12-month period ending in April, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and fentanyl was involved in almost two-thirds of those deaths, making it the largest cause of overdose deaths in the United States.

Overall, during fiscal year 2021, CBP confiscated a total of 11,200 pounds of fentanyl—up from 2,150 pounds the year prior, signifying a 521 percent increase.

It should also be noted that some of the deaths from fentanyl have been because someone took a pill they believed to be Oxycontin or some other pain killer that had been laced with fentanyl. The lesson to all Americans should be that you should never take a pill unless it is from a pharmacist and in a bottle that has your name on it.

Ruining A City Already In Peril

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On Tuesday, The New York Post reported that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has created the first legal ‘shooting gallery’ for drug addicts in the city.

The article reports:

With just four weeks left in office, Mayor Bill de Blasio launched the country’s first legal shooting galleries Tuesday morning, calling them safe havens for addicts — shortly before five people overdosed at just one of the clinics on opening day.

“Overdose Prevention Centers are a safe and effective way to address the opioid crisis. I’m proud to show cities in this country that after decades of failure, a smarter approach is possible,” de Blasio said in a statement.

The nonprofit-run centers, New York Harm Reduction Educators on E. 126th Street in Harlem and Washington Heights’ CORNER Project on W. 180th Street, opened Tuesday.

There were five overdoses at the East Harlem site that saw 85 users inject drugs laced with fentanyl including heroin on Tuesday. 

This is not the way to deal with the drug problem. Also, this is a big change to make four weeks before leaving office.

The article concludes:

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), whose district includes Staten Island and parts of southern Brooklyn, called on the Department of Justice to block the sites, noting that under former President Trump the DOJ said such sites would violate the federal Controlled Substances Act.

Malliotakis wrote US Attorney General Merrick Garland Tuesday urging him to “take swift action to enforce federal law.”

The congresswoman cited a Jan. 2021 Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that determined it was a federal crime for a supervised injection site run by a Philadelphia nonprofit to allow consumption of illegal drug use at its location.

“Instead of focusing on the root cause of the drug epidemic, Mayor de Blasio is enabling drug cartels that continue to break our laws, smuggle illegal drugs over our border, and prey on our children,” Malliotakis said.

“Crime and fentanyl use are at record highs because of open borders, botched bail reform, and anti-police policies that keep releasing criminal drug dealers back onto our streets. Opening taxpayer-funded heroin shooting galleries is not a proper solution. These centers not only encourage drug use but they will further deteriorate our quality of life,” she said.

De Blasio has largely turned a blind eye to daytime drug sprees in major city hubs like the Garment District and the Triangle Plaza Hub in the Bronx.

It might be a good idea to acknowledge that a good deal of our drug problem in America is related to two things–an open southern border and the Chinese manufacturing and selling of fentanyl. Until we are willing to address those two issues, we will continue to have an addiction problem in America. Setting up ‘safe’ places to take illegal drugs does nothing to combat either problem. There is no law regulating illegal drugs or controlling what is in them. There is no guarantee that an illegally purchased drug will not contain a fatal does of fentanyl.

I Think We Have Our Priorities Wrong

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The Gateway Pundit posted an article today with the following headline, “Custom Officials Seize Small Packages of Lifesaving Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine in Chicago While Record Amounts of Fentanyl Continue to Flow Across Southern Border” What? Has our government forgotten their obligation to protect Americans?

The article reports:

Customs and Border officials captured two small packages of Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport recently. The two drugs would not have raised an eyebrow before the COVID pandemic. But since the Democrats and media politicized the completely safe, inexpensive and effective medications the Customs agents are on the lookout for these cheap drugs.

The agents captured packages of 100 Ivermectin pills, 32 Ivermectin pills and 40 hydroxychloroquine pills.

The article quotes a Newsweek article:

The press release said that while officers were conducting an x-ray inspection of a package from China, “officers noticed some discrepancies.” The package stated that it contained “decorative beads,” CBP said.

After officers noticed the discrepancies within this package, they conducted a further investigation and discovered that instead of “decorative beads,” the package actually contained 100 tablets of Ivermectin…

…In addition to the package from China, CBP said that they intercepted another package arriving from Mexico that contained 32 more Ivermectin tablets and 40 Hydroxychloroquine pills.

Hydroxychloroquine was previously given emergency use authorization from the FDA for treatment against COVID-19 but on June, the agency repealed its authorization and warned against using it outside of a hospital setting.

I think certain branches of our government have their priorities out of order.

Suing To Protect Americans

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Newsmax is reporting the following today:

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is suing the Biden administration over its refusal to restore the Trump-era Remain in Mexico policy, saying that without it, fentanyl is flowing across the nation’s southern border and causing deaths in his state. 

“Ending the Remain in Mexico policy will undoubtedly lead to an increase in illegal drug trafficking and thus senseless deaths from fentanyl,” Morrisey said in a statement issued Thursday. “I’ve long believed that a lawsuit should not be necessary to force the government to secure our southern border.”
However, he said his office sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in June, but the administration has “failed to respond to our concerns. The border is more porous than ever. In the face of such silence and inaction, and because so many lives are at stake, litigation is the only remedy left to West Virginia.”

The article concludes:

Morrisey asks the court in the lawsuit to find that canceling the Remain in Mexico program was both rash and ill-considered, and to “remand the termination” of the policy and to order the defendants to “consider the impact the termination of MPP has on border security and the trafficking of fentanyl across the Southwest border into the United States.”

The mainstream media has been covering the crisis at our southern border as a humanitarian crisis (which it is) because of the thousands of immigrants coming into America, possibly with Covid, with no money and no place to go. They have chosen not to put a lot of emphasis on the fact that the drug smuggling and people smuggling are a financial windfall to the drug cartels. By refusing to finish the border wall, President Biden has essentially funded the Mexican drug cartels supplying the drugs that are destroying many of the youth in America. Hopefully this lawsuit will be successful.