This Sunday, America's fentanyl crisis. The highly addictive synthetic opioid, 50 times more potent. And heroin is at the center of the deadliest drug epidemic in American history. Fentanyl is killing more than 70,000Americans a year.
Texas law enforcement alone have seized enough deadly fentanyl to kill every man, woman, child in the entire United States of America. A new war on drugs emerging as a key 2024 campaign issue. Joe Biden will never solve the drug overdose crisis because he is actively destroying our border. This stuff just flooding in, it's affecting communities all across this country.
What will it take to stop the flow of drugs into the United States? This is a red alert moment. Is punishing the drug itself really effective? What we need to do is solve this crisis in America and come together like parts of.
Wait. What is the best approach to the growing public health crisis? My guest this morning, Dea Milburgh, the entire Ohio U.S. senate delegation, Republican J.D.
vance and Democrat Jared Brown, and a panel of experts on the front lines of this crisis. Former Chicago Mayor Royle, former Huntington, West Virginia Fire Chief Jan Raider, and Dr. Andrew Kalutnik, the director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative at Brandeis University. Welcome to Sunday and a special edition of Meet the Press from NBC News in Washington, the longest running show in television history.
This is a special edition of Meet the Press with Chuck Todd and a good Sunday morning. It is 100 times more powerful than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin. The DEA calls fentanyl the single deadliest drug threat our nation has ever encountered. What was once an obscure drug to treat pain in end stage cancer patients has become the leading cause of death for American adults under the age of 50.
When President Richard Nixon launched America's war on drugs 52 years ago, annual overdose deaths stood at 6,771. Last year, overdose deaths rose to more than 110,000. That's almost half the number of Americans who died simply from COVID And deaths from synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, accounted for nearly 70% of those overdose deaths. The opioid overuse epidemic began in the late 90s, driven then by the over prescribing of opioids to treat pain.
While drug manufacturers like Purdue Pharma, which has recently paid an $8.3 billion federal settlement 2020 profited from this problem. By 2010, heroin deaths began rapidly increasing. And then beginning in 2013, it was overdose deaths increasingly involve synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Fentanyl precursor chemicals are made in China and To a lesser extent, also in India.
And they're shipped to Mexico, where they're then pressed into pills to look like prescription drugs. And it's primarily being done by two powerful drug cartels, Celloa and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. China and Mexico are not willing partners of the United States. China formally severed any counter narcotics collaboration after then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island of Taiwan in 2022.
And then last week, the Justice Department filed the first ever charges against Chinese companies they believe are responsible for manufacturing precursor chemicals, stopping the Chinese chemical companies that are supplying the cartels with the building blocks they need to manufacture deadly fentanyl. We are targeting every step of the movement, manufacturing and sale of fentanyl from start to finish. Nus, Mexico, cooperation on drug trafficking has collapsed under this current Mexican president, Lopez Obrador, known as Amlo, who was denied that fennel was even produced in Mexico. And then he lashed out at the United States for spy and, quote, interference.
After 28 members of the Sinaloa cartel were charged in April last year, the DA seized over 370 million, 79 million deadly doses of fennel. It's more than double the amount it sees in 2021. And that's enough to supply a lethal dose every single American. But officials estimate they are capturing maybe just 5 to 10% of the fennel that is crossing in from Mexico.
And they acknowledge it could even be less than that. The drug is often found in fake pills. It's made to resemble prescription drugs like oxycodone, Xanax, and Adderall. And it's sent through the mail, marketed on the Internet, social media, including the children and teens.
This is a crisis the United States has struggled to combat in any meaningful way since President Biden took office. His administration has launched a public health campaign known as One Pill Can Kill, warning about the fentanyl threat. And they're introducing new scanning technologies to border crossings. In theory, the fentanyl issue should be way above politics.
But with Republican opponents opening using the issue as a wedge to blame Biden for border policies, the President has said very little publicly about the crisis. Fentanyl is killing more than 70,000Americans a year. You got it. Obviously, that was from the State of the Union.
The reality is that more than 90% of fentanyl seizures along the border this year have been at the legal US Ports of entry. And most of those involved with sneaking fentanyl across the board, US Citizens. Even the scope of the addiction crisis is not yet clear. More than 9 million Americans misused opioid in 2021, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
And yet the agency has not tracked the rise of fentanyl and does not know how many Americans are even using it. What's clear is that fentanyl is touching every part of American life and every demographic group. An ex friend of the family who soldiers, you know, they were an aqua sh that was an oxy and took half of it and never woke up. There's no second chances most of the time for fentanyl.
Are you either going to die or you're gonna get addicted? That's just it. You know something, you need to say something. And if you can't say it, take care of it.
He had bought some of the blue oxy pills and taken a half of one and died within one minute. And joining me now is Anne Miller, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, obviously more well known as the DEA administrator. Welcome to the. Thank you for having me.
Before we get into some specifics and what's been done over the last week when it comes to some specific charges that un. Just file. Let's talk big picture here. We've had a drug problem in this country for 50 years.
What makes fentanyl so much worse right now than any of these other crises that we've had over our 50 year war on drugs. So thank you for having me. Give me the opportunity to talk about what I think is the most critical issue in the United States today, which is the fentanyl Crisis, where the CDC has just reported that last year over 110,000Americans have died from fentanyl methamphetamine poisoning. About 200Americans are dying every day from fentanyl.
What I say all the time right now is that this is not a war on drugs. This is a fight to save lives. We are losing Americans every. In every single community from coast to coast and every single place in between.
Fentanyl is now. And one of the things that's really different about this, a few things. First, it is the deadliest drug we've ever seen. Widespread, it is 50 times more powerful than heroin.
And so if someone does, you want to believe the legalized version of this drug that was FDA approved is 50 more fentanyl. What we're talking about now is the illicit, or I understand that, but this was originally a legal drug. Yes. And just to make sure to be clear on this, there it is, tightly controlled as a lawful drug, given in hospitals, often for cancer patients, and end of life as patches or put in under Someone's tongue.
What we're talking about is totally different. What we're talking about started in Mexico in 20, 20, 14, 2015, where the criminal cartels, and in particular the Sinaloa cartel, realized that they could take chemicals and make drugs. And so one of the ways that this is so different than any other threat we've ever seen is that these are man made or chemical drugs, unlike heroin or cocaine, they're grown. You know, you sell your crop and you could find the crop, maybe even Iraqi, a crop.
Yes, this is totally different. This is chemicals. And what's terrifying about this in so many ways is that the only limit of the amount of fentanyl that could be made is the amount of precursor chemicals that can be purchased. And so these are the chemicals that can be used to make fentanyl.
The other reason why I think this is so different and it is really worth staying on this just for a minute, is that fentanyl, tiny quantities, are so highly addictive and potentially deadly that what we see the cartels doing is they're hiding that pental powder and other drugs like cocaine, like heroin, like methamphetamine, and they're pressing into these pills made to look exactly like oxycodone or Percocet or Adderall, when it's fentanyl filler. So tens of thousands of Americans are dying without having any idea that they're taking fentanyl. So it seems as if this almost feels as if it's an impossible task. The metaphor is, you got a hole in the boat, you're shoveling out water, you guys just, you're seizing more fentol than ever before, and the deaths continue to grow.
What does victory over this fentanyl scourge and saving lives look like in the next year or two? Yeah, so, I mean, to me, the core thing that we have to be focused on is Americans are dying. Right. So, you know, we can talk about as much as we seized.
We seized enough fentanyl last year, 410 million doses. That is enough deadly doses to kill every single American. And yet how much do you think that's true? So this is.
We know, we don't know how much, we don't know the exact amount that got through. But we do know, you know, we brought thousands of cases against individuals across the country, we announced them in April, that are associates of cartels and they're selling the pills on social media, they're selling on street, so we know something's getting through. So first of all, we have to Save lives. And we have to do everything we can to push that number down.
The second piece, which I think is really important, is we have to change the way we work. Our mission right now is to save lives by defeating these two cartels that are responsible for almost all of the fentolin in the United States. The Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco cartel. And we have to stop the fentanyl from being made.
Alright, your job, on one hand, you're talking about wanting to save lives, but in essence your job to deal with supply, not necessarily the demand side, is it? Well, so when thinking about the supply side, I agree. Our core task right now is to attack every single part of that supply chain. And this is one way in which we're working differently than we worked before.
So for many years we've been focused on a high value target. We're the leader of an organization that can be an effective way to deal with drug trafficking. But we are now talking about vast global criminal enterprises with thousands of people in more than 45 countries around the world. It's a multinational corporation, the criminal equivalent, based in Mexico, starting with precursor chemicals being purchased mostly in the People Republic of China, but money laundering and global drug trafficking happening across the globe.
So we have to go after every single part of that network. And you see us doing that. We announced charges today against four Chinese chemical companies, eight Chinese nationals, two of whom are now in custody. Starting there with the precursors of chemicals.
Is the Chinese government going to cooperate with us on this? So we have had recent conversations with Chinese authorities both in Beijing and Washington, talking about improving law enforcement cooperation. And what I would say to you, Chuck, is that the EAC is ready to work with anyone who will work with us. Is it true that your cooperation has basically disappeared in the last couple years?
So for about the past year, we have not had the cooperation that we want to have. And of course we have offices in the People's Republic of China and all over Asia, with 334 offices around the world. So the recent conversations I think are very important. And now we have to see if we can turn this into law enforcement cooperation when it comes to your ability to choke the supply.
We have two countries that are not doing business with the United States. One is China, and I argue the other is Mexico. And I'd ask you this, these cartels, who's in charge of Mexico? Is it the government or is the government afraid of these cartels?
So what I would say is, you know, our relentless focus right now on these two Cartels. And while there are two countries that are the major, obviously Mexico is where Sinalo and Jalisco are based. And the vast majority of precursors of chemicals are coming from China. We are now tracking these two cartels in more than 45 countries, many of whom are good partners to the United States.
And so as we look at this as a global supply chain issue, we are able to do work that we've never done before. The Mexican president basically denied that, and he is totally not, I mean, at least in public, does not seem like he accepts the premise that this fentanyl issue is a problem in Mexico. One of the things that we did in April, we announced charges against the Silo Cartel. I would argue to you that they're the leaders right now in fentanyl trafficking to the United States.
And what has the Mexican government done to help us with this? And just to go back to your initial question, what we showed and those charges and that case is still pending, but what we showed is that there's a question that fentanyl, as alleged in the indictment, is being synthesized in Mexico. So there are many things that we're doing and investigating. There are cases I think are critically correct.
Are you getting cooperation with Mexican government? So where we are now, and I think where we are right now is first, the United States is now taking a cross government approach. And so in the past six months, 12 months, we've sat with treasury, we have sat with State, we have sat with other federal law enforcement agencies. And I think it's really.
And the deputy tree general has been to Mexico, as has a president's Homeland Security advisor. And they're all delivering the message of how important and critical this is. So what we are seeing is we are seeing some increased cooperation with Mexican law enforcement and the military. Now, what I would say to you very, I think it couldn't be said enough.
We can't allow 110,000Americans to die. Let me ask you about the cartels. Would your job be easier if they were designated as foreign terrorist organizations? So DEA has vast authorities.
We have the ability to prosecute cases under the 959 statute globally. If there was a foreign terrorist organization designation, that would not change our current authorities, do you think? Border politics, because it's so polarizing and frankly, it can be used as a way to try to hijack the fentanyl issue. Maybe positive or negative, makes it harder for this Democratic administration to talk about it because they don't talk about border issues.
I think, I think there is what I've seen over the last few years, there's a fundamental shift in people's willingness to talk about it. And including just walking into a room. I almost do not walk into a room right now where someone hasn't lost a loved one or someone in their community. And that has changed.
Do you feel like there's a shift? Do I think we're where we need to be at? No. I think way too many Americans still understand that on social media that, you know, where your kid might be, that pill is potentially deadly and there are no second chances.
And so I think we have to continue to increase awareness. Is there fental issue a big problem at the border or bigger problem on social media? So, you know, the border is an important part of this conversation because most of the fentanyl that we see coming into the United States is coming in through the southwest border. In the indictments we announced in April, what we've charged is that the fentanyl is coming in through every way possible, by air, by land, by sea, by underground, usually by Americans, by both.
By both. But essentially coming in at very high rates through the southwest border, often in trucks or cars. But yes, coming in through the border. It's an important part of the conversation.
Social media is also a vital part of the conversation. It is what I call the last mile. Because what the cartels need, they're selling the deadliest poison they've ever seen. They need that to get.
Exactly. And they also need to be able to expand and sell more. They need to be able to reach people at massive. And that's what social media is doing.
And social media companies that all cooperate on. We've been in conversations with social media, with the social media companies. The deputy attorney general convened all of us in April of this year and made it very clear, number one, that the companies have to comply with their own terms of service, which say this is illegal. You cannot be selling take pills, you cannot be selling drugs on social media websites.
Number two, law enforcement needs to get information from the social media companies. We have not until recently gotten nearly as much cooperation as we need. And finally, this is an outright emergency. So they need to be doing absolutely everything they can to get the deadly drugs off their.
Off their platform. Is there one thing you don't have that Congress could give you that you think could help right now that you don't have? So we talk a lot with Congress about social media. We talk a lot about the need for these platforms to, you know, essentially one of the main ways we see Americans dying right now is through social media, the purchase of pills, fake pills on social media.
So again, if we're after, how do we stop 110,000Americans from dying? That's a place to start. Thanks for coming on. The one takeaway, of course, was Mexico.
The other one in that interview should be the problem. Social media. When we come back, Republican Senator J.D. vance and Democratic Senator shared Brent the two centers from Ohio, one of the states partisan by this addiction crisis.
Welcome back. Ohio has become one of the epicenters for this addiction crisis. And now the fight against mental accidental overdose deaths increased by more than a thousand percent from 467 deaths in 1999. More than 5,000 deaths in Ohio in 2021.
Opioids were involved in 80% of Ohio's unintentional drug overdose deaths that year. It's the fifth highest number of overdose deaths of any state. And joining me now is Republican Senator J.D. vance of Ohio.
Senator Vance, welcome to the press. Thanks for having me. Let me start with why you think your home state of Ohio has, had, has been impacted so hard by these other us. Yeah.
So if you look, just historically, we've always had more substance abuse problems in the western country. If you look at sort of where the industrialization. Right. A lot of these manufacturing jobs went to China, Mexico and so forth, I think that obviously was a mistake, but now we're dealing with the consequences of that fact.
And what happens when people lose their jobs, they lose their livelihoods. There's a sense of social stability sometimes that does lead to an increase in demand for frozen alcohol. Now, what's different about this maybe than 30 years ago is I look, alcoholism is a serious problem. I don't mean to minimize it, but if you take a person who was addicted to alcohol 30 years ago and you make that fentanyl now, all of the things that we work towards giving people a second chance, getting them into treatment, it's so much harder with fentanyl because it's so deadly and it's so, so the demand side, it's one thing to try to kill the supply side.
Obviously we got to stop the demand side. Addiction has touched your life. You've written about it extensively. What are some things government can look, there are a few other things, Right.
So number one is people who have stable lives, stable families who grew up in not necessarily wealthy households, at least comfortable households, financially stable households, they're much less likely to be addicted. That doesn't mean fentanyl doesn't affect people from upper middle class backgrounds. Of course it does. But it's much more concentrated in people who are struggling financially.
There is a very direct line between job losses to China, especially in the 80s and 90s, and the heroin and alcohol problem today is a very, very dark line. So one way we have to rebuild the middle class in this country and ensure that people don't want to do drugs in the first place. The second thing here is that of course we want to prevent people from getting addicted. But once they are addicted, treatment is a major source of the story here.
30 years ago we went almost all sick. We didn't go carrot and we were dealing with cocaine, crack. How do we, Right now a lot of proposals are more sticks than carrots. Are we sure these sticks are gonna work?
I think that the carrots and the sticks, again, both of these things really, really matter. We can't overstate how different this is from crack, from cocaine, from alcohol. It's so much more addictive and so much more deadly. The most heartbreaking thing that I've experienced, I'd say in the last couple years because of the fentanyl problem, is you go into any meetings, right, Narcotics Anonymous, where people are sort of taking the first, second and third step to recovery.
You go and talk to people and you always hear the story, hear a story about an 18 year old girl who got got addicted, got caught up in the wrong stuff, but was a year clean, was two years clean, wasn't working, was thinking about getting custody of her kids back, doing all the things that we want people to be able to do in a country of second chances, but one relapse. And because it was fentanyl instead of heroin or crack, not even as much people relapse, they're dead, right? And so many times you hear the story of people who are doing the right thing. Even in my own family, I've seen people relapse multiple times.
I've seen relatives who get back on the horse the seventh or eighth time, and that's what they're right. They're 10 years clean now. We're proud of them, we're happy. Of course, that's a good story for our family.
But if you take this incredibly deadly substance, you don't get seven or eight relapses, you maybe get one or two if you're lucky. That's why you have to work on supply and demand problem. Let's talk about the supply side, because we've got two countries we know, China and Mexico. Basically, they're not cooperating with us, okay?
The Chinese are actively not cooperating with us. Anymore. And the Mexicans lie to us. AMLO has bullets.
Letter hugs, not bullets. Has been a failure. So we're kind of hamstrung, are we not? Well, we're hamstrung if we assume good faith from everybody that we're working with.
But I think if we actually have some real American leadership, we can make some good progress here. You want to go to the. You want to make these cartels terrorist organizations? Right now, we're treating them as international criminal syndicates.
One step away. I would empower the President of the United States, whether that's a Democrat or Republican, to use the power of the US Military. Copy. These drug cartels here, here's the real problem.
Similar to being incomplete if we have to. Absolutely. Here's the real problem with Mexico here. It's sort of twofold, Right.
On the one hand, you have the cartels, which are arguably the best criminal terrorist organization in the entire world, because the amount of national corporation. Look, we have investments that are, you know, we can't. We wish it was only drugs are made. Exactly.
And by the way, I talked to DEA agents who think that the amount they're bringing in their revenue per year has gone up 14 fold just in the last couple of years. That shows you what I think bad border policies can do. But the second thing, Chuck, is we have to recognize the Mexican government is being, in a lot of ways, destabilized by the constant flow of fiddle. You mentioned Colombia, Right.
The Colombian drug cartels were so powerful that Colombia became a failed. You think the fentanyl problem is bad now? What about three years from now when the Mexican drug cartels are more powerful than the Mexican state itself? Well, it's interesting.
You said. We just saw an example of that. They do not govern northern Mexico. Absolutely not.
All right. The Mexican government basically had to get permission to help find those people that killed those Americans. Let's talk about the Chinese side of things. This.
They seem to use our concern about what they're doing with these precursor chemicals as part of their geopolitical negotiations. Right. They have. They stopped cooperating with us because Nancy pollisted.
Shut up in Taiwan. How should we want to disaggregate those? But if they don't, how do we manage it? Look, we have less economic leverage, China than we did 15, 20 years ago because we continue to make bad decisions.
But we still have a lot of leverage. Okay. And the Chinese export a ton to the American markets. They absolutely need the American consumer to be able to run their businesses.
We should be willing to say that if you don't stop sending fentanyl free cursors to Mexico into our own ports of entry, we're going to repeal you guys economically. That is the real tool. We're going to invade China because they're seeing fan all in our country. We can increase tariffs and extract a massive economic cost.
I think the Biden administration should be doing exactly that. You think we can hire enough people to do the inspection? It seems like most of this sentinel comes in at ports of metric and a lot of it is a ports of metric. Is there a reasonable way to inspect everything and everybody?
Because it's American citizens bringing in the fence. So they're the basically being hired to be the rider. So fair point there. I want to address that.
A lot that's coming through ports of entry, we don't really know how much is not coming through ports of entry point because we're not catching it. But I think the fact that we have a pretty effective way to capture this stuff at ports of entry is evidence that it does work. Is it perfect? No.
Right. No solution here is perfect. The goal here is not to get to zero people killed by drug overdoses. The goal is to get less than 100,000 and less than 90,000 and less than 80,000.
Those are attainable goals. And absolutely having better screening airports of ministry is part of that solution. It does seem we're throwing more at it when it comes to war on drugs. Is it possible?
When you look at Portugal, you look at what's another form? Would we tackle this better if we legalized it? I know that seems like a crazy notion, of course, look. But you look at some of the outcomes of Portugal and you think maybe it's not so crazy.
I think Portugal is a very different country. In fact, if you look at some of the strategies that have been tried in Portugal, some of them have been tried in certain municipalities in the United States. And what you end up seeing is drug overdose numbers go up, addition numbers go up. So I think the Portugal approach could work here.
It would have frankly already worked. Look, some harm reduction absolutely matters, right? Suboxone, just sort of medically assisted treatment for people who try to break clean this stuff. All that's part of the equation.
But I think that if we believe we're gonna solve the opioid problem by handing out needles, we're gonna make the problem worse. In fact, we're raising evidence that we've done this. So no, I don't think that's the solution, but I do think that we should follow the evidence. It ultimately leads here.
Legalization is not going to help. Maybe doing medically assisted treatment more and making that more accessible. That's a good solution. Senator J.
Vince thanks for one mom in northwest Ohio who lost her 21 year old son Austin Land last year, put up a billboard to honor him and to warn of the dangers of fennel. He was only 21 years old. He was leaving two days for the Marines. We have all practically raised him together.
That's kind of how we are here. A lot of moms suffering and I don't want to see anybody else from this community have to go through what I want. You Andrew now is Democratic Senator SHE Brown, Ohio. He chairs Senate Banking Committee.
He's co author of the Fend Off Fentanyl Accent. Welcome back to the price action. Start with why do you think Ohio has become such a magnet for fentanyl overdose? I don't know that Ohio's a lot worse than other states than that.
I, I think Ohio partly because of it won't sound, it won't sound quite accurate. But because we've been hit so hard by bad trade agreements from NAFTA through PMTR with China, where companies when I went to Johnny Apple Senior High School, I went to school in Mansfield, Ohio with the sons and daughters of machinists, electric works at Westinghouse, machinists at Tappan and auto workers from GM and carpenters and electricians and insulators and laborers. And those jobs, 10 years after I graduated, those jobs started to go south because these companies were looking for cheap labor. Then it went overseas.
Nafta, EMTR with China and those communities have struggled. And I think that, you know, addiction generally, whether it's alcohol, whether it's, whether it's cocaine, whether it's fentanyl, tends to follow despair. And I think that's probably why I mean it doesn't mean fentanyl doesn't. All segments of society probably worse in those communities.
So we have supply issues, we have demand issues. This fend off Fentanyl act, you're trying to get at the money part of things. You're trying to get at the money laundering part of things. There's some Republicans, including in the your colleague in Ohio that wants to see these cartels labeled terrorist organizations right now.
They're sort of one step short of that, right? It's sort of criminal syndicates. Where are you on this? Well, I'm agnostic.
How we label them. I think the important thing is is an all the above approach. When you look at you look at from the supply chain to addiction to death in too many cases from fentanyl. It means we need to scale up treatment programs.
I spent time at the Talbot House in Cincinnati, Bridges, Path and Dayton, all kinds of places where I'll sit around to one. One man in Cincinnati put his hand on his, on the arm of his maybe 32 year old daughter in. Without this treatment facility Talbot House, my daughter would be dead. I hear those stories far too often.
So I don't care what we call these treatment facilities. Well, we can scale them up if there's, if there's interest. But it's a partnership and we have a state legislature that's about to eliminate the sales tax apparently. Sales tax on guns, continuing to cut taxes for rich people.
They don't fund, educate public education and public treatment programs the way we should. We have the federal government, it's too, it's too sort of just uncertain about steps to take on these issues. A lot of local communities are stepping up, YWCAs are stepping up all kinds of local programs like I mentioned. But it's all the bus treatment programs.
It's giving, it's giving police the tools they need to bust fentanyl sellers safely because this top substance is so dangerous to cutting off the actual source of the precursor chemicals coming out of China in what's happening in Mexico? Well, we've seen this indicates. Let me ask about AML and the that runs Mexico. Do you think you can be a trusted partner?
It seems as if both the Trump and Biden administrations have sort of cut a deal with ammo. You slow the flow of migrants, we'll look the other way. And looking the other way has meant not going after these cartels. Well, it's not the Mexican government's interest that these cartels thrive the way they do.
These are these. Are you say that, are you sure he thinks that? Well, I'm not sure what he thinks but I can't imagine by any measure of any quantifiable measure there that he can think this is good for his country. These are blood thirsty people that will do anything to make this kind of money.
There's always deaths around me. I don't even mean deaths of Americans and Mexicans that overdose. I mean deaths because you can't, you can't penetrate them. And we have people that know how to do that in this country.
We have people that know how to do the sanctions. Civilized guy that understands power, but he understands that the cooperation with us matters too. Do you think it's possible that at the boar at the ports of entry. We could use technology to inspect every single person and think that came over in order to stop fennel or something.
I don't think nearly. First of all, it's probably possible, I would say presence of both parties for years have failed at the border. Have failed this whole issue of immigration in the border. So you can talk about all the technology.
I want the technology. I want our agents to have all the latest technology. Not just our agents, but our police and Barbara in Ohio and Norwood, you know, Ohio and southern Ohio and have the kind of technology that can protect their lives and help them. Help them ferret this stuff out better.
But I think that not nearly all the fennel comes through that comes across the border. But we'll never be. That's why. That's why our bill has gotten work done is so important.
Because it will cut back on the production. Because we can't stop it all from coming in. Because it comes in a whole bunch of different ways. Is there?
If the fact that fennel comes in the country doesn't mean we have unsure border. Can we have a secure border? Oh, I think we have a secure border. We need a secure border.
We need Congress to actually work together on that. Not just demagogue issue after issue, but even a secure border. Keep this stuff out. You got it.
In your world, our sanctions mean none is produced. But you got to get us all the above. It's treatment, it's police work, it's. It's sanctions, it's border protection, it's all that.
All right, let me ask you this. Spend your entire adult lifetime and most of my entire lifetime, we've had a war on drugs. Drugs are winning. I mean it is, is it simply.
That's just the way it is. It's always gonna be a whammy. There's always gonna be a new drug. There's always gonna be something we have to go get.
Or is this something that we've been culturally changed on the demand side? I like to think we learned something from the last, from other wars on drugs. First of all, we've learned that he can't just imprison everybody. He just can't arrest the arrest and arrest reality.
That's why we have this, you know, all the above approach that we're going out to the source. We' police more, doing better in treatment. It's. We've never dealt with alcoholism in this country either.
We try prohibition and many people on the AA. I know lots of people who have who joined AA in their teens. Or 20s or 30s in their lives have been really good with temptations always around them. Some have committed suicide, some have had all kinds of problems.
I don't think we ever give up. It's a year condition people have of potential addiction. Senator Sheriff Brown, appreciate you coming in. Like I said, this is one of those issues where I can tell there's not a lot of partisanship is everybody don't have the answers.
Yeah, fair enough. Thank you. Up next, the press has been covering the war on drugs for decades. We look back to what then Senator Joe Biden had to say about President Clinton's approach at the time.
No probation. Welcome back. For President Biden, like so many American families, the issue of addiction is personal. Senator Biden has fought a long time drug addiction.
In 1996 then Senator Joe Biden joined a Meet the press round people center around the African drug use and he had some tough words for President Bill Clinton's approach. I publicly stated that this president is silent on the matter. Now what's the one thing that can deal with the kids? The one thing to keep them from getting in the drugstream or once they sniff it, get out of it.
No pun intended. There's only two things you can do. The moral disapprovation of society. The president starting it or him speaking to it the most two dealing with the things that work.
The prevention programs, the education programs. This is about a society that does not provide enough opportunity for people living in certain areas circum certain circumstances that relate to jobs, homes, families, families. No drug policies gonna settle that. When we come back our tougher laws.
The answer to solving this overdose crisis Data download is next. Welcome back. Data download time. It's been called the nation's longest war and more than five decades in many Americans are wondering what have they got out of the time and money spent on so called war on drugs.
But different measures suggest that those policies have had limited success in qualifacts and have produced at best uneven impacts across the country. So let's start with the basics. The war on drugs has not only been long 52 years, it has been expensive $39 billion last year. How about this?
We have spent in the 52 years over a trillion dollars since we launched the so called war on drugs in 1971. And despite throwing all that money at it, the problem remains the 80s. We're talking about cocaine and crack cocaine last few years as opioids. That the cup of tea driver drug overdoses is syn opioids like fentanyl, the chief culprit as you can see here and we showed this graph at the top of the show, opioid deaths were eight and a half times higher 2020 than 1999.
And synthetic opioids have been driving that's by much more than commonly prescribed opioid opiate inherently. But just like in the 80s and 90s, not all Americans are being impacted equally. In 2018, as you can see here, White American effects had a higher opioid overdose death rate than the nation. 18.8 per 100,000 in the population versus 14.6 for Americans overall and 14.1 for black Americans according to the CDC.
But look at this. In just the last three years the rate for black Americans has skyrocketed more than doubled. 33.5 per 100,000. And the population of figure for white Americans has also climbed 28.4 per 100,000.
The overall figure also has climbed to 24.7 per 100,000. But these numbers for black Americans obviously stand apart. And guess what? At the same time the number of convictions for fentanyl trafficking has gone way up.
More than 450% for 422 offenders 2018 to more than 2300 last year. Once again is black America being hit the hardest? Let me show you this. Black offenders make up the largest share of fentanyl convictions.
According to the USNC Commission of 41% offenders were black, 39% were Hispanic. Whites made up a much smaller portion of fentanyl convictions at about 19%. So in other words, despite 50 plus years action, drug overdoses over convictions largely due to fentanyl and black Americans are bearing the front. This price is down on MOP and its addiction and incarceration.
When we go back, our panel of experts who have been on the front lines of this crisis for years. Welcome back. Join me now our free guests who have been on the front lines of this fentanyl crisis. And frankly I've been drug overdose crisis for some time.
Former Chicago Mayor Royal life coach, the prosecutors, well before that, Dr. Angel Clodney and Medical Director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative. President of Physicians Responsible Opioid Prescribing. And Jan Reyer, the former Fire Chief of Huntington's Virginia, Director of the Huntington Mayor's Council of Public Health and Drug Control Policy.
Welcome all of you. Start with the former elected official here. You've been on the front lines prosecutor, you've suspect your own family with your brother. Where are we today versus where we were in the 90s.
Well look, I think the Good news coming out of Chicago is that we were really focused on harm reduction and treatment. We have decades of evidence that you indicated earlier in the show, but that the war on drugs was not a success. It didn't stop the problem. And at the local level, what we have to focus on is how do we help these folks?
We get them to turn their lives around. And we've done a couple things in Chicago. Number one is we made sure narcon is available literally everywhere. I remember going into libraries and talking to librarians about their fear in certain areas of our city, rediction was very high about finding people in bathrooms at od.
So we made sure we got narcon out everywhere. Fentanyl's on test strips. It's critically important and particularly because what we're seeing is not only a huge number of African American males, 45 to 64 are the hardest hit population, but we're now starting to see younger people who had no interest in opioids but were taking other drugs and finding that they also are now laced with lace. Janet, we first met six years ago when the issue was heroin.
Yes. And this is, look, we're talking about urban community chocolate, West Virginia, more rural committee talk about the transition from what you were fighting with heroin addiction. I remember you were the one going, I want to get these little Narcans. And everybody.
I remember you talking about that. Yes. And now what? It's not like.
Well, it's worse. You know, 2017 was our worst year in Cavill County, West Virginia, a County of 92K. And that year we had 220 to deaths from overdoses and more than 70% of those were from fentanyl. And that was the year that fentanyl really came into our area.
It's tougher, you know, it gets tougher to save lives because that one time that they overdose can be it. Is there any best practice you've seen or developed or try to work with in the last six years you think this is worth? For some, I think that what we need to do is stay focused on each individual and be kind and to realize that these are the most fragile people. It's very shame based.
It's guilt based. And we need to provide them with the self worth that they need to accept the treatment. You feel like we need a cultural change? I think we need a cultural change because still today the number one barrier is stigma more than anything else.
Dr. Glani, flip your part of this group for positions for responsible opioid. But that's been the problem right I mean any doctors made us addicts. Yeah.
And you know, I heard earlier you asked the Ohio senators, why does Ohio have especially severe problem? Yeah, I think one of the best answers to the question about why some geographic areas have been hit harder than others boils down to exactly what you're asking about prescription opioids. We have good data that tells us that the opioid crisis is most severe in the regions of the country where opioids are prescribed most aggressively. Like there's a direct research, there's no question about it and it really makes sense what's happening right now with fentanyl.
It's important to understand that we, roughly speaking have three groups of opioid addicted Americans. We have an older non white group, mostly black men who became to addicted, addicted to heroin many years ago and were long time heroin users who are dying at a very high rate right now because of fentanyl in the heroin supply. And then we have the two groups of opioid addicted Americans who became opioid addicted post1996. Their addiction began with prescription opioids.
It's a younger group that switched from prescription opioids to heroin and is also dying at a very high rate from fentanyl right now. And then there's a middle aged and older group of white Americans that became addicted to prescription opioids that are actually doing a little bit better right now since doctors have started to prescribe more cautiously. So Jen, trying to deal with this. Look, in West Virginia, I believe they have a drug induced homicide law, right.
That's called, that's labelist for surgery murder. Is that the way out of this? I don't think so. That's not.
You know, to me a strict law like that is going to stop somebody from calling 911 when somebody overdoses. So that makes that event more deadly. What do you want from the Biden administration? What would you need from any administration?
Whether it's Biden, whoever. Because this is a, I think kind of a politics issue. Look, every mayor is going to tell you that they need more resources. What we've seen that's been successful is the things I talked about before.
But we've also I think done a lot with diversion at the police stations. So our public health department led by I think Our gifted commissioner, Dr. Alice Nardi, has worked directly with our police department. The people that we are diverting at the police station, 73% of them we don't see.
Again, do you have enough so you have police right now? I know every City is still trying to hire more police officers just in general. And you have to have also police officers that know how to deal with us. What we have done is we stood up two types of teams.
One that is got law enforcement involved, but really the social worker takes the lead for these particular calls. We've done a lot of training with our 911 call takers and dispatchers, but we have a separate team that's focused on opioid users abuse. That's the team that's going out there, that's responding, that's educating, that's working one on one, as Chief Rare said. But we've got to make sure that we use every tool in our toolkit and it's soft power is more, much more effective than the hard power of law enforcement for this particular problem.
Dr. Kong, I know the research is not fully there yet trying to find frankly a drug that can help people not be addicted. Right. In some form of this.
Is that going to be our way out of this on the dance? But we do have good treatment for opioid addiction and I think to bring down overdose deaths in the short run. If we saw that people had better access to the most effective treatments, then I'm talking about a medication called buprenorphine. Methadone maintenance can also be helpful for many people who are opioid addicted.
If opioid addicted individuals had better access to that, no, it should not be over the counter because these are also, even though they're very good treatments for addiction, they can be addictive status. And every firehouse should have naloxone for reversing overdose deaths. But treating addiction should really be done within the healthcare system. And if someone was opioid addicted could more easily access effective treatment than they could access fentanyl or heroin or prescription opioids, I really do think we'd see overdose deaths starting to come down.
And Jen, what about getting folks fast for health? That's still, that's still a barrier. That's still tough. It's a barrier.
And just like the mayor said, you know, we have a team like that too. We have two teams. We have a team that goes out within 72 hours after you overdose and offers you treatment options. It's got a quick response team and then we have a police officer paired with a mental health care provider to respond in the moment.
But I think that we need to change our thinking and how we treat those that are suffering with substance use disorder because they are very fragile in the individuals, addicts. This is a disease. This is not something that we should be sharing. These people we'll be helping.
Thank you for this. That's all we have for today. Thank you for watching. Please enjoy the 4th of July weekend safely.
We'll be back next week because it's Sunday. It's Meet the Press. Hey, everyone. I'm Dylan Dryer, co host of the third hour of Today and mom to three wild boys.
I've learned a lot my years as a parent. Mostly that I don't have it all figured out yet. And I'm not the only one. This is my new podcast, the Parent Chat.
Each week I sit down with someone new for honest conversation and real world advice about parenting. I am over here just, like, winging it. Hey, I'm trying not to screw my own kids up. I'm gonna give you a headlight.
Search parent on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.