Republican senators added $45 billion over ten years to their health-care bill for treating America’s opioid binge. It’s a crass vote-buying Band-Aid that does nothing to stop the cross-border drug trafficking that’s feeding the addiction.
Mexico is the world’s third largest producer of heroin – an opioid drug — and Mexican heroin now controls over 50 percent of the market share. Additionally, most of the heroin from Colombia and South East Asia comes to the U.S. via Mexican drug cartels.
A border wall would choke that flow.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., points out that the opioid epidemic stems “not only from abuse (of prescription drugs), but from the illicit drug trade.” America, he said, is “consistently a step behind in stopping trafficking of opioids and other illegal drugs.”
The U.S. lags behind, in part, because Washington continues to slow-walk construction of a wall along strategic areas of the 2,000-mile-long, drug-infested border.
Meantime, the situation is deteriorating across northern Mexico. Drug-related killings have surged there, with more than 11,000 deaths during the first five months of this year, on pace for the deadliest year in the country’s post-revolutionary history.
The House spent four straight days this session considering more than a dozen bills addressing the opioid issue. Not a single measure addressed securing the border to stop drug trafficking.
FAIR: The current state of the border wall
In addition to treatment for opioid addicting Americans, we must also invest in border security infrastructure to interdict the entry of these dangerous drugs to the United States.
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Our Ohio Senator (Portman-R) has spends half his time promoting CARA and looking for hard working US taxpayer dollars to Band-Aid this problem by giving $$ to addicts and treatments. He blames most of it on . . . wait for it . . . the US federal government for encouraging “pain management” and doctor/hospital prescribing drugs. He also blames China for sending drugs here; as if they randomly select US (especially Ohio) households, mail them opioids and, somehow, force them to then use same. He seldom, if ever, mentions personal responsibility, Mexican cartels or the border wall; only his precious CARA bill and the need for more tax $$ from non-addicted working citizens to “help” the addicts.
Please lambaste the “Senator” with Tweets @senrobportman & #CARA as he is prolific on Twitter. Tell him to fund and build the wall!
WOULD A WALL STOP DRUGS?
We should remind ourselves
that drugs smugglers in Mexico
are among the most intelligent and well-organized gangs on Earth.
They have stayed in business
because they have been able to stay at least one step ahead
of all law-enforcement efforts.
A wall or fence along the southern border
would not be much of a barrier to drug cartels.
By the time the wall could be constructed,
the smugglers would already have created
new ways of getting their product into the USA.
Some obvious places where mass shipments have been stopped
should clearly be improved.
But putting up a wall in one place
would only encourage the creation of new and better routes
for getting the drugs into America.
Because of the huge profits from this illegal business,
the cartels will always have more money to spend
than the U. S. government can put together
trying to stop or slow the import of illegal drugs.
The same billions that might have been spent on a wall,
could be devoted to drug-treatment programs,
thereby reducing the DEMAND for drugs on this side of the border.
Many American addicts WANT to get off these drugs.
If the demand drops by half,
the shipments will correspondingly be reduced.
Read other reasons the wall against Mexico will not work:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/431865303561834/permalink/1246425735439116/
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