PAF
Member
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2012
- Messages
- 13,561
By David J. Bier
09/14/22
[snip]
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Here are facts:
* Fentanyl smuggling is ultimately funded by U.S. consumers who pay for illicit opioids: nearly 99 percent of whom are U.S. citizens.
* In 2021, U.S. citizens were 86.3 percent of convicted fentanyl drug traffickers—ten times greater than convictions of illegal immigrants for the same offense.
* Over 90 percent of fentanyl seizures occur at legal crossing points or interior vehicle checkpoints, not on illegal migration routes, so U.S. citizens (who are subject to less scrutiny) when crossing legally are the best smugglers.
* The location of smuggling makes sense because hard drugs at ports of entry are about 97 percent less likely to be stopped than are people crossing illegally between them.
* Just 0.02 percent of the people arrested by Border Patrol for crossing illegally possessed any fentanyl whatsoever.
* The government exacerbated the problem by banning most legal cross border traffic in 2020 and 2021, accelerating a switch to fentanyl (the easiest‐to‐conceal drug).
* During the travel restrictions, fentanyl seizures at ports quadrupled from fiscal year 2019 to 2021. Fentanyl went from a third of combined heroin and fentanyl seizures to over 90 percent.
* Annual deaths from fentanyl nearly doubled from 2019 to 2021 after the government banned most travel (and asylum).
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Conclusion
Border enforcement will not stop fentanyl smuggling. Border Patrol’s experience with marijuana smuggling may provide even clearer evidence for this fact. Marijuana is the bulkiest and easiest‐to‐detect drug, which is why it was largely trafficked between ports of entry. Despite doubling the Border Patrol and building a border fence in the 2000s in part to combat the trade, the only thing that actually reduced marijuana smuggling was U.S. states legalizing marijuana. It is absurd to believe that interdiction will be more effective against a drug that is orders of magnitude more difficult to detect.
The DEA plainly stated in 2020 that fentanyl “will likely continue to contribute to high numbers of drug overdose deaths in the United States” even with the ban on asylum and travel restrictions. But ending asylum or banning travel has been worse than useless. These policies are both directly and indirectly counterproductive: first directly by incentivizing more fentanyl smuggling and then indirectly by distracting from the true causes of the crisis.
My colleagues have been warning for many years that doubling down on these failed prohibition policies will lead to even worse outcomes, and unfortunately, time has repeatedly proven them correct. The only appropriate response to the opioid epidemic is treatment of addiction. But for this to be possible, the government must adopt policies that facilitate treatment and reduce the harms from addiction—most importantly deaths. To develop these policies, policymakers need to ignore the calls to blame foreigners for our problems.
Full article, stats and graphs:
https://www.cato.org/blog/fentanyl-smuggled-us-citizens-us-citizens-not-asylum-seekers
09/14/22
[snip]
.
.
Here are facts:
* Fentanyl smuggling is ultimately funded by U.S. consumers who pay for illicit opioids: nearly 99 percent of whom are U.S. citizens.
* In 2021, U.S. citizens were 86.3 percent of convicted fentanyl drug traffickers—ten times greater than convictions of illegal immigrants for the same offense.
* Over 90 percent of fentanyl seizures occur at legal crossing points or interior vehicle checkpoints, not on illegal migration routes, so U.S. citizens (who are subject to less scrutiny) when crossing legally are the best smugglers.
* The location of smuggling makes sense because hard drugs at ports of entry are about 97 percent less likely to be stopped than are people crossing illegally between them.
* Just 0.02 percent of the people arrested by Border Patrol for crossing illegally possessed any fentanyl whatsoever.
* The government exacerbated the problem by banning most legal cross border traffic in 2020 and 2021, accelerating a switch to fentanyl (the easiest‐to‐conceal drug).
* During the travel restrictions, fentanyl seizures at ports quadrupled from fiscal year 2019 to 2021. Fentanyl went from a third of combined heroin and fentanyl seizures to over 90 percent.
* Annual deaths from fentanyl nearly doubled from 2019 to 2021 after the government banned most travel (and asylum).
.
.
.
Conclusion
Border enforcement will not stop fentanyl smuggling. Border Patrol’s experience with marijuana smuggling may provide even clearer evidence for this fact. Marijuana is the bulkiest and easiest‐to‐detect drug, which is why it was largely trafficked between ports of entry. Despite doubling the Border Patrol and building a border fence in the 2000s in part to combat the trade, the only thing that actually reduced marijuana smuggling was U.S. states legalizing marijuana. It is absurd to believe that interdiction will be more effective against a drug that is orders of magnitude more difficult to detect.
The DEA plainly stated in 2020 that fentanyl “will likely continue to contribute to high numbers of drug overdose deaths in the United States” even with the ban on asylum and travel restrictions. But ending asylum or banning travel has been worse than useless. These policies are both directly and indirectly counterproductive: first directly by incentivizing more fentanyl smuggling and then indirectly by distracting from the true causes of the crisis.
My colleagues have been warning for many years that doubling down on these failed prohibition policies will lead to even worse outcomes, and unfortunately, time has repeatedly proven them correct. The only appropriate response to the opioid epidemic is treatment of addiction. But for this to be possible, the government must adopt policies that facilitate treatment and reduce the harms from addiction—most importantly deaths. To develop these policies, policymakers need to ignore the calls to blame foreigners for our problems.
Full article, stats and graphs:
https://www.cato.org/blog/fentanyl-smuggled-us-citizens-us-citizens-not-asylum-seekers
