Failures and Failing Trust

I was actually not going to write anything today. I had a good time last night on my front porch with friends. I didn’t want to pre-write anything. I was enjoying the quiet so much I cleaned up the kitchen, went back on the porch, and just sat out there watching TV till past midnight. Then I slept in this morning. Yes, I am headed into a Christmas vacation mindset and still have a full week of work left.

But…

My friend Joe Cunningham sent me this piece. He said it was a must-read. I think he’s right that it probably is the most important story of the day.

We are in a fentanyl crisis in the country and hundreds of thousands of people are going to die and many millions more will be affected.

If you don’t understand the problem, let me put it very simply from a story I was reading the other day — with cocaine, marijuana, 1990’s methamphetamine, or a lot of other drugs, the addiction does not start the first time. Sure, you are more susceptible to addiction, but you could snort a small bit of cocaine and walk away, assuming you don’t have a heart attack or it is not laced with something.

With the form of meth being brought into the United States now and, especially with fentanyl, addiction is immediate at consumption. The addiction is so powerful that you will be willing to sell your children for sex, your house, your car, quit your job, live in a gutter, and prostitute yourself for just one more fix. It will eventually kill you, and you, more likely than not, will ever be rid of the addiction, no matter how hard you fight it.

Fentanyl is so addictive that the United States no longer has a heroin problem. Fentanyl outperforms heroin, with a higher addiction rate and a higher chance of no recovery.

Read that last paragraph again. Seriously.

Now, fentanyl is being used to lace other drugs to make those drugs more addictive and potent. So the cocaine that you might have once been able to walk away from is now the addictive gateway drug to fentanyl.

From the Washington Post:

The American fentanyl crisis deepened during the coronavirus pandemic. From 2019 to 2021, fatal overdoses surged 94 percent, and an estimated 196 Americans are now dying each day from the drug — the equivalent of a fully loaded Boeing 757-200 crashing and killing everyone on board.

This is not the failure of one presidential administration. This is the failure of three. The crisis began during the Obama years and is still running. Neither the administrations of Obama, Trump, or Biden could stem the tide.

Yes, it has a lot to do with an insecure border. But that is not the only problem. It has to do with agency turf wars, failures to disseminate information, etc.

When Rome entered the crisis of the third century, the Roman bureaucracy was able to keep the empire going. America might not make it to a third century if we do not fix our bureaucracy.

Reform should be a bipartisan issue, but both sides have entrenched views and lobbyists who don’t want bipartisan reform. Instead, both sides seek concessions to their friends and donors.

President Donald Trump took office just as the fentanyl epidemic was about to explode. He promised to build a wall along the U.S. southern border that he said would stop drugs. But Mexican traffickers were sneaking fentanyl right through the front door, hidden in passenger vehicles and commercial trucks passing through official ports of entry in California and Arizona. Today, the partisan border debate in Washington remains fixated on a physical structure that is virtually useless for stopping the deadliest drug U.S. agents have ever faced.

Since President Biden took office, his administration has amplified a public messaging campaign to warn about fentanyl’s mortal threat — “One Pill Can Kill.” He has stepped up efforts to improve scanning technology at border crossings and repair a broken counternarcotics partnership with Mexico. But with Republicans blaming Biden’s border policies for record numbers of immigration arrests, the president and many of his top officials have said little about the skyrocketing amount of fentanyl entering the country.

Our government is failing us. The failure is both bipartisan and bureaucratic. This is just one of the issues.

We’ve seen COVID policy failures at the state and federal levels. We’re seeing an entirely new social contagion sweep through public health systems whereby they embrace and encourage children to commit genital mutilation. We’ve seen a collapse of our public education system.

Some of them are failures of progressivism. But a common thread runs through — our bureaucrats are failing. The nonpartisans have become partisan. The open has become closed. The agencies have become fiefdoms unwilling to share and collaborate. That last is not a new problem, but it is worse today.

A president should not need a new czar to make Washington work. It should be done because it is the right and good thing to do. But something must happen and some one or some group must be empowered to stop the spread of fentanyl into the United States.

For all the other problems from which progressives and conservatives can be divided, there should be no division here. The flow must be stopped. The tide must be made to recede.

This is a crisis, and leaders across the aisle need to rise to the occasion.