How to reduce deaths from fentanyl

First, sincere sympathy to anyone who has lost a loved one to the deadly fentanyl tide unleashed on America by China.

This may seem harsh: If the victim bought their drugs from a “friend” or nonauthorized source, don’t blame anyone but them. Blaming the victim?

Yes, and it is completely justified. In the same sense that when a smoker dies of lung cancer, I feel bad, but what did the smoker expect? The risks were obvious.

Rebecca Kiessling is blaming President Joe Biden for the July 2020 deaths of her two sons, Caleb, 20, and Kyler, 18, along with their friend Sophie Harris, 17.

They bought what they thought was Percocet from a “friend” and died when they took the drugs that came from — let’s face it — a criminal.

Kiessling is a lawyer and pro-life activist who said “the president owes me an apology” for the deaths of her children.

They were killed by fentanyl under the Trump Administration, Biden explained at a news conference, with a kind of ironic chortle. Their deaths did not happen on his watch.

The right-wing media portrayed it as Biden laughing at the Mom or the victims. That is a total distortion.

The right wing outrage machine also insists on creating a false link  between the massive invasion at the southern border, and the proliferation of drugs.

While some drugs may be carried by illegal immigrants, every decent source I have read says that the overwhelming percentage of drugs come in at border crossings, hidden in vehicles that are too numerous for Border Patrol to check.

Biden is to blame for the Open Border for people.

China and Mexico are responsible for the flow of drugs.

And, yes, the purchasers are also responsible. They create an insatiable demand, which led to an estimated 100,000 American deaths last year. Deaths from drugs have exploded in the last decade.

The deaths have been accelerated by the explosion of deadly opioids. It is not as if the deadly results of fentanyl is not known. We all know, like we know the risks of smoking. Drug users must assume responsibility for their actions. Society’s role is to provide them with rehabilitation, maybe even force them into it.

In a House hearing, a tearful Kiessling accurately described the fentanyl scourge as an act of war against the U.S., and congress has its thumb up its ass.

While we can pressure China — in that police state they know who is cooking and sending the drug materials to Mexico — to reel in its criminals.

We can pressure Mexico, which is sliding toward status as a narco state in which the drug kingpins buy politicians with abandon and use their private army to face down Mexico’s actual army.

Some have suggested we declare the drug criminals “terrorists” and go after them with the full weight of the CIA and our elite military special forces.

Not bad ideas. Here’s another: A massive educational campaign, centering on social media and TV and streaming services, pushing the accurate warnings that drugs bought through illegal sources are killers.

Yes, a return to Nancy Reagan’s “Just say no” campaign, with the memorable image of a frying egg as a brain on drugs. We should recruit celebrities to get the message out, and use morgue pictures of victims, the scarier the better. I’d also hand out fentanyl-finding test strips, although I don’t have much confidence that addicts would use them.

We live in a pill-popping culture. Getting high is more of a national pastime than baseball. We all know that, and the use of  heroin has destroyed untold lives. But heroin use is actually declining.

It has been replaced by opioids and others.

Cutting off the supply is difficult and long-term.

The short-term solution is for parents, and friends of potential drug users, to get into their heads the idea that they are playing Russian Chinese Roulette when they order a pill from a friend, dealer, or unknown online source.

The contents of pills bought that way also are unknown. Better to tell them to get drunk on beer or flavored vodka, assuming you can’t convince them that they don’t need to get high.

The blame attaches to the self-destructive addict.