Both Trump and Harris are said to be cracking down on Fentanyl

Republicans and Democrats agree that the U.S. must do something about fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that is significantly more powerful than heroin. It’s often found mixed with street drugs, but not because addicts are clamoring for it: rather, fentanyl is cheaper and easier to produce and smuggle, making it an attractive alternative when prohibitionist governments crack down on painkillers.

Unfortunately, none of the major parties seem willing to admit the government’s own role in making the drug so dangerous, or to pursue an alternative to the classic war on drug policy.

This was evident in an early answer during last night’s vice presidential debate between Senator JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Vice President Kamala Harris, Vance charged, “said she wanted to undo Donald Trump’s entire border policy… and what that means is a lot of fentanyl coming into our country. I had a mother who struggled with opioid addiction and is I don’t want people struggling with addiction to be denied their second chance because Kamala Harris has allowed fentanyl into our communities at record levels.

This is a common refrain from Republicans: “She even wants to legalize fentanyl,” Trump said this weekend. (Harris has not explicitly said she wants to legalize fentanyl, although in a 2019 questionnaire from the American Civil Liberties Union she supported “decriminalization at the federal level of all drug possession for personal use” and said that “the opioid crisis has reaffirmed the failure of criminalization.”)

“We are losing 300,000 people a year to fentanyl coming into our border,” Trump said at a campaign rally in July. In reality, fortunately, the numbers are much lower: in 2022, approximately 107,000 deaths from synthetic opioids were reported, of which approximately 74,000 were due to fentanyl.

Of course, the vast majority of fentanyl brought into the US is not carried by illegal immigrants or the result of porous borders: From 2019 to 2024, 80.2 percent of people arrested at the border with fentanyl were U.S. citizens, according to David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute.

And as NPR reported last year, “The vast majority of illicit fentanyl – nearly 90% – is seized at official border crossings.”

Nevertheless, Trump has promised that if re-elected, he will crack down on fentanyl sales and trafficking, even deploying the military against drug cartels and asking Congress to “ensure that drug dealers and human traffickers receive the death penalty.”

But if you’re hoping that a potential presidential administration of Kamala Harris will take a softer approach to fentanyl — which has once again spread as a direct result of a prohibitionist policy – ​​Harris himself apparently wants to rid us of that idea.

“Today I visited the U.S.-Mexico border and spoke with Customs and Border Protection officials about our progress in securing our border and disrupting the flow of illicit fentanyl into our country,” Harris said in a message this weekend on X.

“Harris pledged to double funding for the prosecution of transnational criminal organizations and cartels, and to modernize America’s screening and vetting infrastructure,” Reuters reported on the trip.

On her campaign website, Harris calls fentanyl a “scourge” and brags about the steps she has taken as vice president and as California’s attorney general to crack down on drug traffickers.

While Harris has admirably expressed her support for marijuana legalization over the years, her openness to pursuing alternatives to prohibition unfortunately doesn’t extend much further than that.

“(Harris)’s campaign platform is very clear that the overdose crisis is a criminal issue, not a public health issue,” wrote Kastalia Medrano of Filter. “We’re going to get out of it anyway.”

“Both candidates have prioritized the criminalization and punishment of fentanyl and the overdose crisis. But this punitive approach is actually one of the leading causes of the overdose crisis, which continues to claim lives despite fifty years of drug war policies,” said a statement from Drug Policy. Action, the advocacy group of the Drug Policy Alliance. “Instead of more ‘lock-them-up’ proposals, candidates must get serious about reducing demand and saving lives by promoting health and economic solutions that work.”