JD Vance: There’s Fentanyl in Marijuana, What Do the Facts Say?

Donald Trump‘s running mate JD Vance spoke at the Milwaukee Police AssociationFriday in Wisconsin, where he claimed fentanyl-laced marijuana was popping up everywhere, prompting a special barrage of criticism for the Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

Vance began by noting Harris’s record on crime and law enforcement. “We need a president, Donald J. Trump, who will make their job easier, not harder. We have to stop this anti-law enforcement craziness. We have to stop some of the policies that have been put in place by the Harris administration that make it harder for police to do their jobs.”

He then moved on to one of Harris’s tasks as vice president in the Biden administration: the U.S.-Mexico border.

Vance placed the blame for the opioid crisis, the Mexican cartels and what he called the presence of fentanyl in marijuana squarely on Harris.

Also read: Trump’s running mate JD Vance on cannabis legalization and banking reform: not quite yes, but not quite no

‘Drug cartels operate in our communities’

“So the border policies that we have on the southern border are making our communities less safe, even as far north as Wisconsin. It means that Mexican drug cartels are operating in our communities. It means that people are dying from fentanyl,” Vance told police union members, Fox28 reported. “I spoke to another police officer who said we have fentanyl not only in heroin and opioids, but even in prescription pills, or I guess non-prescription pills that are sold on the street. We have fentanyl in our marijuana bags that our teenagers are using.”

Fact Check

The Partnership to End Addiction says there is no solid evidence that marijuana is being laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid produced primarily in Mexico and smuggled into the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has confirmed that drug dealers are mixing fentanyl with other drugs, although the DEA has not issued any warnings about fentanyl being found in marijuana. With approximately 55 million people in the U.S. using cannabis, we would likely see much higher overdose rates than we do now if fentanyl were in the marijuana supply. Synthetic opioids like fentanyl contributed to nearly 70% of the estimated 107,543 overdose deaths that occurred in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Vance on Cannabis

Meanwhile, Vance’s stance on marijuana appears to be in line with the current U.S. and Trump’s, which is that states vote on and set their own marijuana laws. Vance, who has been an Ohio congressman since 2022, opposed legalizing cannabis for adults in his home state, which it did in November 2023. A month later, he told a local TV station that the voters’ decision should be respected and “it should be an Ohio issue,” Vance said.

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