As President Biden provides his State of the Union tackle, his administration is struggling to stem a devastating wave of fentanyl deaths. Here’s how the opioid disaster has advanced in lethal methods.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
One of President Biden’s visitors at tonight’s State of the Union tackle shall be a father from New Hampshire who misplaced his daughter to a fentanyl overdose. Biden addresses the nation because the opioid epidemic has advanced into a much more lethal public well being disaster. NPR habit correspondent Brian Mann seems to be at how we received right here and what would possibly come subsequent.
BRIAN MANN, BYLINE: One factor everybody agrees on – the hovering demise toll from the opioid fentanyl disaster is shattering households, scarring entire communities. Brandon Dunn from Texas misplaced his 15-year-old son, Noah, to a fentanyl overdose final summer time.
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BRANDON DUNN: He was murdered by a drug seller promoting counterfeit Percocet capsules. Noah was the third sufferer in lower than two months in Hays County from illicit fentanyl.
MANN: Dunn testified earlier than the House Judiciary Committee final week. The U.S. has actually been navigating two public well being crises on the similar time – the COVID pandemic and an explosion of drug deaths linked to fentanyl. Dr. Rahul Gupta heads the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
RAHUL GUPTA: Our nation is going through 108,000 overdose deaths in simply 12 months. That’s one life misplaced each 5 minutes across the clock. We’re residing in historic occasions. Our North Star is to save lots of lives.
MANN: The Biden administration has centered its response on well being care, making an attempt to get extra habit therapy to extra folks, whereas additionally scrambling to make a drugs that reverses opioid overdoses, known as Naloxone or Narcan, extra broadly accessible. Gupta says these methods are serving to.
GUPTA: After greater than 35% enhance in overdose deaths in the course of the first 18 months of the pandemic, the newer whole overdose demise counts have remained largely unchanged.
MANN: So the overdose epidemic could also be slowing only a bit, however researchers nonetheless say the U.S. is on observe to lose one other 1.2 million lives to opioid overdoses by the tip of this decade. The fentanyl that is killing so many individuals is flowing into the U.S. from Mexico. The Drug Enforcement Administration says the leaders of drug cartels have determined fentanyl is a moneymaker – low-cost to make, simple to smuggle by way of official ports of entry. And the cartels merely do not care if it kills a variety of Americans.
DAVID TRONE: We’re not successful. We’re shedding the battle.
MANN: Congressman David Trone, a Democrat from Maryland, says fentanyl smuggling cannot be significantly curtailed with something brief of a giant U.S. navy presence inside Mexico, which he says is unrealistic.
TRONE: My perception is there’s completely no technique to cease it. If we may, you realize, do main raids in Mexico with our navy, it is not our nation. It’s their nation. They’ve chosen to not go after the drug traffickers.
MANN: This is why the Biden administration is focusing totally on well being care. There’s a rising conviction amongst Democrats and lots of drug coverage consultants that illicit fentanyl is now a everlasting fixture on American streets. But many Republicans are pushing again, arguing extra might be executed to safe the border and infrequently falsely linking fentanyl with undocumented migrants. Congressman Chip Roy from Texas spoke ultimately week’s judiciary listening to.
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CHIP ROY: The overwhelming flood at our borders distracting Border Patrol from with the ability to perform their responsibility to cease the move between the ports of entry or do inspections on the ports of entry is leading to extra fentanyl pouring into our communities.
MANN: But Republicans have not recommended particular coverage concepts or methods which may significantly sluggish fentanyl trafficking. So as President Biden speaks tonight, fentanyl has joined the COVID pandemic as a public well being disaster that is additionally a fault line in America’s political divide. Brian Mann, NPR News.
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