A coalition comprised of 18 state attorneys general is now calling on President Joe Biden to get off his duff and take “immediate and decisive action” on the opioid crisis that is shredding the United States and leaving a trail of wasted lives and dead bodies all over the nation. One of the actions they are demanding the administration take is to have the illegal drug fentanyl declared a weapon of mass destruction, going on to make the case that doing this could protect Americans from what they called a “mass casualty event.”
Fox News reported that the coalition, led by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, wrote a letter to the president explaining that fentanyl is “exacerbating the death toll increasing exponentially every year for the last several years.”
“The purpose of this letter is to propose an unorthodox solution that may help abate or at least slow the crisis’s trajectory while also protecting Americans from a mass casualty event from fentanyl,” the letter stated.“We ask that you consider classifying illegal fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction or, if you conclude you do not have authority to do so, urge Congress to pass legislation to do so.”
The Fox News report said, “The U.S. is dealing with an increase in deaths attributable to illicit fentanyl, which is primarily made in Mexico with Chinese precursors and then smuggled in across the southern land border. The synthetic opioid is 50-100 times more potent than morphine and is frequently cut with other drugs, meaning that users may often be unaware that they are ingesting the potent substance.”
“Of the more than 108,000 overdose deaths last year, more than 80,000 were linked with fentanyl, officials say. The Drug Enforcement Administration has previously warned that the drug is killing Americans at an “unprecedented rate. The letter cites statistics that show that fentanyl deaths increased 59% in Florida in 2020 and 18.3% in Connecticut,” the report continued.
Moody, who has been a leading voice in raising awareness concerning the negative effects of the opioid crisis on the state of Florida, called on the president to declare fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction back in July. The phrase itself is defined by the government as a “nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological or other device that is intended to harm a large number of people.”
The letter penned by the coalition was obtained by Fox News Digital and reportedly shows how the support for this particular course of action has grown in popularity and support.
“Attorneys General from Connecticut, Arkansas, New Mexico, Guam, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Tennessee, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia all signed onto the letter,” Fox News said.
You can read the full letter here.
“Enough fentanyl has been seized in the last year to kill every man, woman, and child in the United States several times over. Indeed, given fentanyl’s lethality, the amounts being interdicted and seized are inconsistent with what one would expect from drug trafficking activity and are indicative of either purposeful conspiracy to murder Americans or an effort to stockpile a dangerous chemical weapon,” the coalition’s letter stated.
The coalition makes the case that the low cost of producing the substance, partnered with how lethal and readily available it is means that it would be an “ideal choice” for bad actors to use as a chemical weapon, going on to point out that the Russian army actually used the substance for that very purpose to bring the Moscow theater hostage crisis to an end, though it led to the deaths of 120 hostages in the process.
“The threat of a state enemy using this drug to do harm to the American people cannot be understated,” the attorneys general argues.
The coalition then makes an argument that calling fentanyl a WMD would require both the Department of Homeland Security and the DEA to work together with other agencies, including the Pentagon, on the opioid crisis, which might potentially lead to policies put together that would detect and/or prevent the transportation of fentanyl into or across the United States.
“We must not sit idly by until a terrorist chooses to inflict harm using this substance on a large group of Americans—our countrymen are already dying from this poison,” they go on to argue in the letter. “We cannot wait for tragedy to strike when proactive steps can be taken now to preserve American lives. We urge you take immediate and decisive action and declare fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction.”
One way that we can take a bite out of this crisis is to actually secure the southern border. Build the wall. Ship illegal immigrants back to where they came from. Show the world we fully plan to enforce our immigration policies, while also cracking down hard on cartels and the criminals they send over the border to peddle their substances on our soil.
