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Republicans Revive the Drug Wars for the Fentanyl Age [1]
['Zachary Siegel', 'Laura Weiss', 'Timothy Noah', 'Anthony Conwright', 'David Marques']
Date: 2023-01-27
Caught in a game of drug war whack-a-mole, House Republicans are now seeking to permanently place all fentanyl-related substances in Schedule I, the strictest government control. “It should be a priority,” said Bilirakis of Florida. “This is poison. It’s a weapon of mass destruction”
During the hearing, House Republicans criticized President Biden and the Democrats for refusing to “secure” the southern border, and for blocking previous GOP efforts to permanently schedule all fentanyl-related substances. “Our border patrol agents are now social workers,” Ohio Representative Bob Latta said.
Republicans frequently frame the overdose crisis as a result of immigration and “open borders.” But a recent study, which found that overdose deaths remained steady or actually declined in areas where immigration has increased, undermines this narrative. Rather, illicit drugs like meth, cocaine, and fentanyl enter America through legal ports of entry, where millions of trucks carrying goods (and drugs) pass through each year. Roughly 90 percent of all drug seizures occur at these ports of entry, and do not involve immigrants or asylum-seekers arriving at the border.
House Republicans have said little about harm reduction or overdose prevention centers, some of the best methods to prevent fatal overdoses by offering services to people actively struggling with addiction. During the Energy and Commerce roundtable, one of the invited panelists, Dr. Timothy Westlake, urged lawmakers to “deploy every overdose prevention and harm reduction tool in our arsenal.”
Consumption sites are recognized around the world as a helpful tool in the arsenal. But in America, there is a well-funded effort to derail this and other harm reduction tools. The Department of Justice has until February 6 to respond to a lawsuit involving Safehouse, a nonprofit that has been vying to open a consumption site in Philadelphia since 2018. In 2019, Safehouse was sued by a federal prosecutor appointed by President Donald Trump, which blocked the site from opening.
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[1] Url:
https://newrepublic.com/article/170188/republicans-revive-drug-wars-fentanyl-age
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