Sen. Josh Hawley is right: Drugs flooding across US-Mexico border kill Missourians
The massacre of three American women and six of their children last week in northern Mexico is being seized upon as one of the most tragic and compelling arguments yet for bringing order and security to America’s southern border.
Here’s another, from a source surprisingly close to home: Missouri, where deaths from drugs largely flowing across the southern border dwarf the casualties there.
In 2017, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Missouri recorded 952 opioid overdose deaths. Fatalities from synthetic opioids — mostly fentanyl, which is 100 times stronger than morphine — skyrocketed in Missouri from 56 deaths in 2012 to 618 in 2017.
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley recently noted that although meth lab seizures in the state have plunged from 1,326 in 2006 to just 50 in 2018, addiction and overdoses are up. So where are the drugs coming from? Hawley tweeted that the Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2018 Threat Assessment Report says most meth in the U.S. comes in over the Mexican border.
Nonprofit media fact-checker PolitiFact.com researched Hawley’s claims, finding them to be true. It seems that when the U.S. restricted the sale of meth-producing pseudoephedrine, meth manufacturing was largely outsourced to Mexico.
Meanwhile, Scott Stewart of global intelligence consulting firm Stratfor told Public Radio International earlier this year that both China and Mexico are flooding the U.S. with fentanyl — China partly through direct mail, but also through Mexico, which is producing and shipping its own up here.
“The Mexicans are really flooding the market with fentanyl in a way that the Chinese can’t do directly by mail,” Stewart said.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported a 52% increase in meth addiction treatment admissions in Missouri from 2012 and 2016, while also noting “the cheapness, potency and availability of Mexican-made meth.”
After Monday’s massacre, Hawley tweeted that in southwest Missouri during the last two weeks alone, “over 40 drug overdoses & multiple deaths from drugs coming across southern border. Story is the same all over the state. Cartels increasingly call the shots in Mexico, and for our own security, we cannot allow this to continue.”
In another tweet, Hawley recommended “sanctions on Mexican officials, including freezing assets, who won’t confront cartels.”
We flippantly talk of a Missouri-Kansas border war when it comes to sports and luring companies across the state line. But there’s a real assault on Missouri, and it’s coming across the border with Mexico, not Kansas.
Hawley is definitely right about that. The facts bear it out — though Missouri can also be faulted for being the last state in the nation without a prescription drug monitoring program.
We wouldn’t go as far as he would, in sanctioning and freezing assets of Mexican officials just yet. But more pressure certainly needs to be brought to bear on cross-border cooperation.
If for no other reason than to reduce the deaths both there and here.