About 90% of the fentanyl seized at the border in recent years was at legal crossings, which undocumented migrants generally avoid, and 91% of the seizures were from U.S. citizens, according to Border Patrol data. It’s much easier to transport fentanyl pills or powder in one of the thousands of vehicles that pass through legal ports of entry every day than with the bedraggled people walking, wading and climbing across the border.
Former President Trump and other politicians and pundits have nevertheless been relentlessly linking migrants with fentanyl on the campaign trail, in Congress and on social media. A Trump campaign ad warned of “record numbers streaming across our border, costing taxpayers billions, and almost as many Americans killed from fentanyl as killed in World War II.” It showed images of crowds walking along a roadside and a Fox News headline reading, “Border Patrol seized enough fentanyl to kill entire U.S.”
This is a classic example of what we call dangerous speech: language that inspires fear and violence by describing another group of people as an existential threat. And it’s working to terrible effect: Americans are increasingly convinced that migrants are to blame for the fentanyl crisis. Social media posts blaming migrants for the drug’s toll more than tripled from December to January, according to our analysis of more than 30 sites
The guy from Pawn Stars blamed the migrant border crisis for his son overgosing on Fentanyl. It’s just white people who don’t want to blame the pharmaceutical industry and our porus ports. It’s always the poor brown people’s fault somehow, not your terrible parenting that resulted in your kids being drug addicts.
It’s just white people who don’t want to blame the pharmaceutical industry and our porus ports
Don’t forget the main culprit of widespread fentanyl: the war on drugs
This, there are many reasons people do opiates, isolation, doctors prescription, homelesness, economic depression etc. but the only reason people are doing fentanyl is because it’s cheap and available, and it’s cheap and available because the war on drugs makes it so the most concentrated substances are the most easily supplied.
If the war on drugs ends fentanyl goes away just like those high proof moonshines that were making people blind in prohibition. Opiate use won’t because the other underlying problems would remain, but it would be far more safe.
It’s not white people- it’s conservatives. Yes they are white people, but so are democrats, and democrats are smart enough not to think that dumb shit.
“Many Americans”
Just say conservatives. It’s the truth and we all know it.
People going to the border rally earlier this month reported being surprised that it wasn’t utter bedlam. They have no real understanding of the world. Only propaganda.
Usually the first question I ask anyone who starts talking about the ‘border crisis’ is ‘have you been to the border’?
I mean, I have. I have family that lives near there. But not one person I’ve ever asked has ever been to the border. They are idiots.
Yup, Im a short drive away from one of the borders. All i hear is talk about a crisis but there isnt anything thats changed. New businesses are popping up but thats generally a net positive
I asked someone one time, what official organization is actually keeping tabs at the border? Wouldn’t it make sense for border patrol to inflate the number for propaganda and budgets?
How long until we tell the idiots watching TV a “migrant caravan is coming”
Remember when roving bands of Antifa invaded all their small towns? Yeah, another delusional panicked outrage.
My democratic senator just emailed a few days ago me about “restoring order at the border… the illicit fentanyl flowing into the country”
And you believed it was actually your democratic senator?
It was the latest of weekly newsletters coming from the same email for years, so yes.
Need to hold bipartisan dems accountable too, I’m sure mine wasn’t the only one that shares these views.
Wow… that’s pretty surprising. Wouldn’t have thought I’d see something like that being legitimate. They definitely need to be held accountable.
You’ve got drugs that are relatively small and hard to detect (compared to weed). To smuggle it do you A) Illegally cross the border and get cavity searched if you get caught or B) Just fucking hide it in something. I would imagine the US postal service is likely the biggest fent smuggler around.
Currently, China remains the primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked through
international mail and express consignment operations environment, as well as the main source for all
fentanyl-related substances trafficked into the United StatesRight, they cross the border and then walk to a facility where they get sorted and where they check their luggages get checked, but they’re bringing fentanyl…
Yes some of them end up selling drugs, not because they bring it in the country but because they need to work as resellers or transport once they’re inside the country to pay back their crossing!
Not commenting on the politics here. But is seized drugs a good indicator where the drugs that don’t get seized come from? Or do the customs also do just logging the drug shipments without interfering to get more accurate data?
Undocumented migrants actually come through legal crossings more often than not. What makes them “undocumented” is when they stay past the length of their Visa. I do find it interesting that they’ve identified US citizens as being the largest importers of Fentanyl. Surely, as a US citizen, you are watched more stringently if you travel to China than say Mexico. With drug sniffing dogs, thermal imaging, x-ray, and a thorough understanding of all of the holes a person has in their body, how is so much Fentanyl still coming into the US? Are border patrol that bad at their jobs? Or is it more likely that there’s an acceptable amount of Fentanyl being allowed into the US to justify law enforcement budget hikes?
Gary Webb found out the truth and paid the ultimate price for it
I think it’s down to the being so incredibly many people coming across legally ever day, you can’t realistically find most of it with how many people they have to search for it.
Pretty sure the doggos can’t smell fentanyl without overdosing anyway…
91% of the seizures were from U.S. citizens,
About 90% of the fentanyl seized at the border in recent years was at legal crossings
So scary brown people illegally entering the US are t the problem. Weird.
Yeah it’s the yellow people and dirty Hondurans
Republicans interpret information to confirm their biases, and once an idea takes root it’s impossible for them to change their minds about it. Facts simply don’t matter. So in this case they see fentanyl and border and the conclusion is that it’s illegal immigrants at fault. It absolves them of any responsibility and also confirms their hatred of the immigrants. Win-win.
It wouldn’t be coming across the border at all if all the Chads and Todds would stop buying it.
And the only way to do that is to fix our shitty system that creates new Chads and Todds every day by keeping them poor and working them to death. Unfortunately, our government still subscribes to the outmoded Puritan idea that struggling is somehow virtuous. And half the country gives 10% of their pay every Saturday/Sunday to the men who continue to propagate that idea.
Shut down the churches by taxing the ever-loving fuck out of them, make laws where religious people are barred from office, and impose term limits on all three branches of government. That is the only way you’ll see any change in the next 100 years.
Maybe we can leave something other than a smoldering pile of shit for our descendants.
But we got every other drug in existence off the streets by attacking the supply chain.
/s
Fuck people are dumb. There’s no thinking here.
The overdose crisis worsened when there were border restrictions, because contamination was more widespread. Also fuck me, the real problem is obviously mostly legal opiate distributors.
Also fuck me, the real problem is obviously mostly legal opiate distributors.
Care to elaborate?
When youre prescribed legal opiates, you take them and then youre supposed to be off after a certain time, however prescriptions are usually either too long or too strong by design from the drug manufacturer, creating a dependence and addiction to opiates. And THEN you hit your cutoff time. These people usually seek out something to ease or continue their addiction, but they also develop tolerances to whatever theyre taking, so then they need stronger and stronger doses. Enter Fentanyl, one of the strongest opiates in circulation because drug manufacturers created the need for it by getting people addicted to their original products.
People dont usually go out seeking fent for the first time, they seek it because its the next step in their addiction
You probably know about the Friend’s actor that portrayed the Chandelier Bong character. He got into an accident and was prescribed with opioids. He got addicted and recently died of an opioid overdose.
Some doctors do it because they are paid to prescribe these drugs even when it isn’t necessary. It’s a mafia.
I broke a few bones riding my bike and I was given a very very mild pill. I remember feeling SO GOOD, my body felt like a marshmallow cloud melting on a rainbow. You know that feeling when it is cold and you get in a warm bed? Imagine that feeling nonstop. I couldn’t wait for the time to take the next one. When they where over, it felt like there was an empty space in my brain. Like, that constant feeling of pleasure and wellness was just gone and it didn’t feel right.
Thankfully I was aware of what was going on and fought through it.
Edit: remembering this was 100% a mistake. My brain is asking for the pills. It’s crazy, it’s been like 4 years.
Many Americans are so painfully stupid that it hurts everyone around them.
Didn’t the president say this?
Opium Wars 2, but China is smarter than England, because they’re letting Latin Americans take the blame.
I’ve been saying this for more than ten years. It is insane to me that this concept has not become mainstream or widely accepted. It is clear that China is using Fentanyl as a social destabilization mechanism against the West. It is one of the many methods they are employing in their death by a thousand cuts strategy.
Bahaha. They’re not bringing fentanyl, they’re bring cocaine. Silly republicans.
I’m curious about those stats. 90% of fentanyl is seized from legal crossings and 10% presumably from illegal ones. Isn’t that a confirmation bias?
Presumably they don’t find any significant proportion of illegal migrants so they don’t really have any idea how much is coming in.
I’m not saying migrants bad but this kind of article is just poor journalism.
Kind of leaping to conclusions there. 90% of what is caught is done so at legal crossings and 10% at illegal. We cannot measure what we don’t catch in either case, so there is no reason to assume a disproportionate percentage of what we don’t catch is coming through illegal crossings.
The stats seem poorly explained. I’m not sure if it’s as you suggest or not based on the article.
It’d be pretty easy to make it plain so I’m guessing it’s not a good faith article.
