Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said that hundreds of American lives are lost daily due to the ongoing fentanyl crisis. Greene tweeted her concerns on July 23 and laid the blame for the crisis on President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas.
“300 Americans die every single day from Chinese-made, Mexican cartel imported fentanyl being brought across our Southern border. Blood is on the hands of Joe Biden and Secretary Mayorkas for refusing to secure our border and end this crisis,” she said in her tweet.
The United States continues to struggle with a fentanyl crisis, according to Fox News. More fentanyl has been seized already this fiscal year than in the entire FY 2022. Fentanyl, a small dose of which is fatal, is mainly produced in Mexico with the help of Chinese manufacturers, according to the article.
The amount of fentanyl seized at the southern border has continued to increase over the past few years, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website. From FY 2020-2022, the total number of pounds of fentanyl seized at the southern border rose from 5,300 in FY2020 to 10,600 in FY2021 and eventually to 14,100 in FY2022 (stats are looking at pounds of fentanyl specifically at the southern border, not in all regions). Already in FY2023, there have been over 21,000 pounds of fentanyl seized at the southern border. Of the 22k pounds that have been seized throughout all USCBP regions, 21,800 have been seized at the southern border.
Greene said that the cartels make billions of dollars from fentanyl smuggling in her Twitter post. “It costs the cartels as little as $0.10 to produce a fentanyl-laced fake prescription pill” which is then “sold in the US for as much as $10-$30,” she said.
Greene posted a video clip in her tweet of the testimony of Derek Maltz, a former Drug Enforcement Administration official, during the recent Homeland Security Committee hearing. After being asked to comment on the current fentanyl crisis, he said, “This is the greatest drug threat that we've ever faced in the history of the country... It’s really not a drug, it’s a chemical weapon coming out of China.”
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas labeled the Mexican cartels as terrorist groups in response to the mounting fentanyl crisis in a 2022 press release. He emphasized the lethality of fentanyl and urged for heightened efforts in eradicating this substance from our communities. He said, “Cartels are terrorists, and it’s time we treated them that way. In fact, more Americans died from fentanyl poisoning in the past year than all terrorist attacks across the globe in the past 100 years.”
