New White House Drug Control Strategy Not Grounded in Reality

Just a few days ago, President Biden released the White House drug control strategy. It is heavy on harm reduction and light on preventing drugs from coming into the country in the first place. With China pushing fentanyl precursors to Mexican Cartels and an open border making it easy to bring fentanyl across the southern border, all the while drug overdoses pushing past 100,000 deaths in a single year, the White House plan makes little sense. 

Harm Reduction Falls Short

The White House drug control strategy has 3 main points in the realm of harm reduction:

• Expand high-impact harm reduction interventions like naloxone
• Ensure those at highest-risk of an overdose can access evidence-based treatment
• Improve data systems and research that guide drug policy development

According to the brief, 41 million people needed treatment for substance use disorder (drug addiction), but only 2.7 million of those people actually receive treatment. The White House Drug Control Strategy news release notes that people cannot receive syringes or naloxone due to barriers like state laws preventing their distribution. Law enforcement knows all too well that drug dealers are now giving Naloxone to their clients who buy fentanyl from them. There is also a study showing that people who abuse opiates like fentanyl and heroin will use more of the drug knowing that they have Naloxone with them to reverse an overdose if it were to happen. So, the users feel emboldened to use more opioids if Naloxone is present. 

I worked in California for 30 years as a cop. I was there when possession of a syringe was illegal and I was there when we got rid of that law and started handing out syringes to anyone that wanted them. What I saw was more syringes littering our streets, a higher drug use rate, and unhealthy injection habits continuing. California is following the President’s drug control strategy when it comes to harm reduction. Any cop in California can tell you that it is not working. Worse yet, it appears the White House drug control strategy comes straight from the California play book. With record numbers of people leaving the state, an exploding homeless rate, and a drug use rate going through the roof, I don’t think it would be a good idea to follow in California’s footsteps when it comes to drug control. 

Going After Drug Traffickers

The White House drug control strategy has 3 points to attack drug traffickers:

• Hitting drug trafficking organizations (DTO’s) “In their wallets.” 
• Increase cooperation between local and international partners to disrupt the supply chain of illicit substances and the precursor chemicals used to produce them.
• Direct Federal agencies to take actions that stop the trafficking of drugs across our Caribbean, Northern, and Southwest Borders.

First and foremost, the chain of fentanyl coming to the United States starts in China. I’ve written extensively about China’s gray war with the United States. A gray war is not quite full blown combat and it isn’t peace either. It is the area in between where two adversaries harm each other without direct combat. Here, China gives tax incentives to fentanyl precursor manufacturers. These manufacturers increase the production of fentanyl precursors to cash in on the tax incentives and then transport them to DTO’s in Mexico. In Mexico, DTO’s complete the manufacture of fentanyl and bring it across our open border to the south. 

Meanwhile, this unabated flow of fentanyl and methamphetamine ties up our resources, sucks up valuable money from our budget, and kills our citizens. All the Chinese Communist Party had to do to cause chaos in the US was to give tax incentives to their chemical industry. That is a gray war tactic and is essentially chemical warfare against our country. 

This budget gives $300,000,000 each to CBP and DEA. This money will come to good use for those agencies, but it does nothing to really curb the flow of fentanyl and methamphetamine into the US. To truly stop the flow of these drugs into our country and curb drug use, we will need to stop China and Mexico from flooding our streets with these drugs. 

Why the White House Drug Control Strategy not Based in Reality

One sentence in this press release sticks out. President Biden states, “The Strategy also aims to strengthen foreign partnerships to address drug production and trafficking, leverage the influence of multilateral organizations to tackle shared challenge of synthetic drugs, and protect individuals and the environment abroad from criminal exploitation by those involved in drug trafficking.”

To have a partnership with Mexico and China involves them being willing to work with us. That is not going to happen and has not happened. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has a very comfortable relationship with Mexico’s DTO’s. To be honest, Mexico is a narco state. Do not expect to get AMLO to help the US at our border. 

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is outwardly hostile to the US, as we have seen in recent events. To think that he or AMLO will work with the US to stop the flow of fentanyl is not grounded in reality. 

I had high hopes that our nation would pick a drug control strategy that would actually change the tide of our current situation. Until we strengthen our border, prevent China from sending chemicals to Mexico, and use harm reduction strategies that do not enable drug use, our problem will only get worse.