Fentanyl grows as issue in election
To understand the 2024 presidential election, it is essential to understand the politics of fentanyl.
Americans have been traumatized by a years-long wave of overdose deaths caused by the synthetic opioid. Once rarely used outside hospitals, fentanyl has become a ubiquitous street drug made by criminal gangs, often in Mexico, from cheap chemicals typically manufactured in China. It frequently is a hidden ingredient in other illicit drugs and can have fatal consequences for unsuspecting users.
Ending the scourge, voters indicate, is a priority.
About 8 in 10 voters in seven swing states say fentanyl misuse is a “very important” or “somewhat important” issue when deciding who to vote for in November — more than the number who cite abortion, climate change, labor and unions, or the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, according to a recent Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll of almost 5,000 registered voters.
Fentanyl has come up repeatedly in a campaign unfolding after an especially deadly phase in the opioid epidemic. From just before the start of the coronavirus pandemic in November 2019 to October 2023, about 270,000 people died of an overdose from a synthetic opioid, according to the most recent provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those fatalities account for the vast majority of overall opioid overdose deaths, which have climbed to about 80,000 a year.
The crisis has received increasing attention on cable news, is the target of scores of bills in Congress and has become a rallying cry from statehouses to school board meetings across the country. And while ideas range from ramping up treatment options to waging war on cartels, voters appear united by a desire to break fentanyl’s grip on American society.
Presidential candidates are seizing on the issue to firm up support from party faithful and woo voters whose allegiances may have shifted due to the crisis. For President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, fentanyl is also a way to talk about everything from immigration and border security to China and crime.
Early in his term, Biden made addressing the epidemic the first pillar of his “Unity Agenda” intended to bring Democrats and Republicans together.
For his part, Trump has blamed Biden’s immigration policies for the rise in overdoses. He has called for deploying the U.S. military to Mexico and for using the death penalty as a punishment for drug smugglers.
“Our country is being poisoned from within by the drugs and by all of the other crime that’s taking place,” he has said. A Republican National Committee spokesperson said Trump would “make America safe again” if reelected.
“We used to deal with traditional drugs and traditional crises,” said Sergeant Rob Ferraro, a Tempe, Ariz., police officer who helped set up a program that trains cops on administering the overdose antidote naloxone. In the past four years, city police have saved 330 lives with the therapy and helped get half into treatment through a partnership with a local health organization, according to Ferraro. Yet the success of such efforts hasn’t always resonated with voters, he said.
“There are different beliefs about how fentanyl is getting here. People blame Trump, they blame Biden,” Ferraro said. “It’s no different from anything else in our country: It’s very polarizing, very binary.”