Opinion: Many Americans believe migrants bring fentanyl across the border. That's wrong and dangerous
www.latimes.com
Illicit imports of the opioid drug responsible for a fatal overdose crisis largely come from Mexico. But U.S. citizens bring most of it through legal ports of entry.

About 90% of the fentanyl seized at the border in recent years was at legal crossings, which undocumented migrants generally avoid, and 91% of the seizures were from U.S. citizens, according to Border Patrol data. It’s much easier to transport fentanyl pills or powder in one of the thousands of vehicles that pass through legal ports of entry every day than with the bedraggled people walking, wading and climbing across the border.

Former President Trump and other politicians and pundits have nevertheless been relentlessly linking migrants with fentanyl on the campaign trail, in Congress and on social media. A Trump campaign ad warned of “record numbers streaming across our border, costing taxpayers billions, and almost as many Americans killed from fentanyl as killed in World War II.” It showed images of crowds walking along a roadside and a Fox News headline reading, “Border Patrol seized enough fentanyl to kill entire U.S.”

This is a classic example of what we call dangerous speech: language that inspires fear and violence by describing another group of people as an existential threat. And it’s working to terrible effect: Americans are increasingly convinced that migrants are to blame for the fentanyl crisis. Social media posts blaming migrants for the drug’s toll more than tripled from December to January, according to our analysis of more than 30 sites

  • LocoOhNo@lemmus.orgEnglish
    7·
    9 months ago

    It wouldn’t be coming across the border at all if all the Chads and Todds would stop buying it.

    And the only way to do that is to fix our shitty system that creates new Chads and Todds every day by keeping them poor and working them to death. Unfortunately, our government still subscribes to the outmoded Puritan idea that struggling is somehow virtuous. And half the country gives 10% of their pay every Saturday/Sunday to the men who continue to propagate that idea.

    Shut down the churches by taxing the ever-loving fuck out of them, make laws where religious people are barred from office, and impose term limits on all three branches of government. That is the only way you’ll see any change in the next 100 years.

    Maybe we can leave something other than a smoldering pile of shit for our descendants.