Those of us who grew up in the 1960s remember well what drugs can do to people. Back then it was heroin and LSD. Today it’s fentanyl, meth, and a flood of synthetic poisons far more lethal than anything my generation ever faced.
To give some sense of scale, a fentanyl overdose equivalent in weight to just a few grains of salt can be fatal. That is an easy mistake for a drug user to make — and it is one reason the problem is so much more dangerous today than it was in the past.
Some people shrug and call it Darwin at work — the idea that only the “stupid” take drugs, and society might as well let natural selection run its course. I reject that entirely. It is a profoundly wrong way to think about our fellow citizens. Government has a basic duty: to protect Americans from preventable harm, whether that harm comes from terrorists, foreign adversaries, or criminal enterprises.
Driven by enormous profit potential, the problem today is that the drug supply chain has evolved faster than our ability — or willingness — to stop it. Congress has been paralyzed for years, and drug cartels have taken full advantage. The result is a national disaster hiding in plain sight.
For years, federal strategy leaned heavily on public-health language, demand reduction, and long-term diplomatic efforts. Worthy goals, but toothless without real action at the border and beyond. Drugs do not enter this country on their own. People bring them. When enforcement collapses, traffickers multiply.
Enter Donald Trump. Whatever one thinks of him as a personality — and there are many valid viewpoints — he is undeniably action-oriented. Instead of endless speeches about immigration reform, he enforced laws already on the books and drove illegal crossings down dramatically in a matter of weeks. And instead of treating the drug crisis as an abstract social problem, he expanded the use of military assets to interdict drug-smuggling operations.
In recent months, the U.S. military has carried out a series of strikes on vessels in both the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific that the administration said were carrying illicit drugs, resulting in multiple deaths of suspected traffickers.
That message — “Your life will be at risk if you bring illegal drugs into the United States” — is a very different message than traffickers have become accustomed to hearing from Washington. When one’s ‘employment’ carries a real risk of death, it inevitably changes the calculation.
But is this level of force actually justified? Consider this:
- About 120,000 Americans died in World War I.
- About 420,000 in World War II.
- About 700,000 in the Civil War.
By comparison, in just the last two decades, drug overdoses have killed well over one million Americans — more than any war in our history.
And unlike war, these people did not die for country, freedom, or any cause whatsoever. They simply died.
And that “one million” figure does not include the decades before fentanyl entered the supply.
Additionally, don’t forget: the damage goes far beyond the dead. Survivors often suffer permanent injury. Families collapse. Neighborhoods erode. Hospitals strain. Employers lose workers. Police deal with the consequences every day.
If this level of destruction came from a foreign enemy, we would call it war. In fact, we have done exactly that on multiple occasions.
Which brings us to a recent debate. Just before the holidays, two suspected smugglers clinging to a sinking boat dominated national headlines. But that was never the real story. The real story is the more than one million Americans already lost — and the tens of thousands who will die in just this new year alone unless the United States finally gets serious about stopping the flow of drugs into our country.
The press has a responsibility here as well. Instead of fixating on dramatic images of overturned boats, it should be informing the public about the scale of the crisis and explaining why decisive action — including military interdiction — may now be necessary.
Criticizing Trump is easy. Addressing the drug crisis is hard. But this crisis is not political. It is personal, and it is national.
We can debate tactics and legality. But we should begin with a simple fact: over a million Americans have died because drug smugglers were allowed to operate with near impunity. If bold action can reduce that number, then bold action is not only justified — it is long overdue.
