My husband died of a fentanyl overdose.
Main as much as his demise, Cleve had been prescribed all kinds of ache medicines. He was a war-wounded Marine who had been despatched to Iraq twice. Throughout his second deployment, an improvised explosive gadget detonated subsequent to the Humvee he was driving. The navy shipped him again to the States with TBI, PTSD and a leg so severely maimed it might ultimately be amputated slightly below the knee. For the following 4 years, Cleve took opioids day by day, a number of instances a day.
Inevitably, he turned depending on them. When he would discover indicators of dependancy to no matter he was prescribed in the intervening time, his docs would change him to one thing new – Dilaudid to Percocet to methadone to Oxycontin, and at last, fentanyl. He was 25 years previous when his physique was present in a lodge room subsequent to a home made aluminum foil pipe.
As somebody who was widowed at 24 years previous, I’m all too acquainted with the price of the opioid disaster in america. At its peak, between 2022 and 2023, drug overdoses took greater than 111,000 lives. Opioid overdoses are the main reason behind demise for People between the ages of 18 and 45. In 2022, simply over 72,000 of these deaths have been from fentanyl overdoses. Between 2022 and 2023, US border management fentanyl seizures practically doubled from 14,700 to 27,023lbs, making it what some have dubbed “the only deadliest drug risk our nation has ever encountered”.
I desperately wish to discover a answer to the fentanyl disaster. Sadly, all Trump’s speak about fixing it’s smoke and mirrors. Moderately than look to analysis and to different nations which have addressed the problem, the Trump administration is utilizing the opioid disaster and households like mine who’ve misplaced family members to justify ridiculous tariffs, a ineffective wall and merciless immigration insurance policies when information clearly reveals that immigration has little or no to do with drug trafficking or drug use. In the meantime, 1000’s of People – our household, our mates and our neighbors – proceed to die each week.
Trump desires us to imagine the Biden administration is at fault for the rising fentanyl downside. He desires us to imagine those trafficking the drug throughout our borders are Canadian and Mexican immigrants. None of that is true.
Listed below are the information.
Practically 97% of all fentanyl seizures occurred on the Mexico border, whereas solely .2% occurred on the border with Canada. To place that in context, in 2024, 21,889lbs of fentanyl have been seized by US border authorities; solely 43lbs of that got here from Canada. And folks aren’t essentially smuggling fentanyl in from China in any respect. Moderately, Chinese language producers promote authorized chemical compounds used to make fentanyl to criminals in each the US and Mexico.
What many individuals misunderstand is that 99% of these funding fentanyl smuggling are US residents; in 2022, 89% of these convicted for trafficking fentanyl have been US residents. And 90% of these medicine are seized at authorized border crossings or border checkpoints alongside main highways. Regardless of Trump’s rhetoric, of all the oldsters who have been arrested for crossing the border illegally, solely .0009% have been discovered with any fentanyl on them in any respect.
And maybe one of the essential issues to notice when contemplating how we received right here is that fentanyl seizures quadrupled between 2019 and 2021, a consequence of Trump’s Covid-era border restrictions. The rationale? Fentanyl is 50 instances stronger per pound than heroin; traffickers may smuggle much less product and nonetheless get the identical return. So when Trump restricted our borders, traffickers switched to fentanyl. In consequence, fentanyl deaths doubled between 2019 and 2021. It has solely gotten worse since.
When contemplating the opioid disaster in america, I imagine we too usually make the error of getting caught up within the perceived immorality of drug use in order that we lose sight of the actual aim right here: to save lots of lives. The variety of drug-related deaths is larger in america than every other high-income nation.
In nations like France and Norway, which have considerably decrease charges of opioid overdose, medicated-assisted remedy packages are frequent. Greater than 86% of adults with opioid-use dysfunction in these nations obtain remedies from such packages in contrast with solely 11% in america. Why is that? Why are we losing time and sources on methods with no information to again them up slightly than doing what has already confirmed to work?
What I wish to see, as somebody who has misplaced a lot already, is for us to collectively cease asking “How can we maintain the medicine out of our nation?” and begin asking “How can we maintain extra of our individuals alive?” As a result of the solutions to these two questions are very totally different, and had we requested the latter sooner, my husband would possibly nonetheless be alive.
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Karie Fugett is an creator residing in Dothan, Alabama. Her debut memoir, Alive Day, is forthcoming on 6 Could 2025
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