{"id":39325,"date":"2025-03-05T03:22:21","date_gmt":"2025-03-05T09:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=39325"},"modified":"2025-03-05T03:22:48","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T09:22:48","slug":"trump-says-tariffs-were-enacted-to-curb-fentanyl-but-u-s-overdose-deaths-are-already-declining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=39325","title":{"rendered":"Trump says tariffs were enacted to curb fentanyl, but U.S. overdose deaths are already declining"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

President Donald Trump says\u2002a primary reason for his new tariffs<\/a> against the United States\u2019 three largest trading partners is what he calls a \u201cnational emergency\u201d brought on by fentanyl flowing across the country\u2019s borders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump says he is holding Canada, China and Mexico accountable for the spread of contraband drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“They\u2019ve allowed fentanyl to come into our country at levels never seen before,” he said in a joint address to Congress<\/a> on Tuesday night, referring to Mexico and Canada, “killing hundreds of thousands of our citizens and many very young, beautiful people, destroying families.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the tariffs come as the fentanyl epidemic<\/a> is showing glimmers of improvement, drug policy experts and economic researchers say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They fear that the 25% tariff on nearly all goods from Mexico and Canada and 20% on all Chinese imports will only erode the international cooperation needed to thwart global drug trafficking operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTariffs are not the sharpest tool in terms of negotiating with other countries and getting them to go along with drug and border policies,\u201d said Bob McNab, chair of the economics department at Old Dominion University in Virginia. \u201cThis is akin to having a fence-line dispute with your neighbor and taking a sledgehammer with you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After years of rising overdose deaths, the United States recorded 87,000 drug overdose deaths from October 2023 to September 2024, a decrease from 114,000 the previous year, according to preliminary data<\/a> from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the lowest overdose death toll in any 12-month period since June 2020, the CDC said. Overdose deaths surpassed more than 100,000 for the first time<\/a> in 2021, with the majority linked to synthetic opioid use. The crisis has devastated small communities<\/a> and urban centers alike<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vanda Felbab-Brown, who studies international organized crime as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit think tank, cited two major factors that have helped curb fentanyl\u2019s devastating effects in the United States: law enforcement efforts during the Biden administration to combat the fentanyl production pipeline in China and Mexico and the widespread availability of the overdose reversal medication naloxone<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese are potentially very ephemeral, but they all predate the tariffs,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, law enforcement has continued to confiscate fentanyl at the border. About 21,900 pounds of the drug were seized in the 2024 fiscal year. That\u2019s down from over 27,000 in fiscal year 2023 but up from the 14,700 in 2022, according to Customs and Border Protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly all of that fentanyl was taken at the U.S. southern border. In the current fiscal year, just 10 pounds have been recovered along the Canadian border to date, compared with 5,400 along the Mexican border, CBP data<\/a> shows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau balked at Trump\u2019s tariffs, saying Tuesday that there was \u201cno justification\u201d<\/a> for them because \u201cless than 1% of the fentanyl intercepted at the U.S. border came from Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last month, after Trump first threatened to impose tariffs, Trudeau announced that he would appoint a \u201cfentanyl czar\u201d and designate cartels as terrorist organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who assumed office in October, has also tried to work with the Trump administration by amassing thousands of her country\u2019s troops along the border last month to snuff out drugs. Sheinbaum has been aggressive with Mexico\u2019s drug cartels<\/a>, deploying troops to go after such crime in the state of Sinaloa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sheinbaum said Mexico would respond to Trump\u2019s tariffs by Sunday. Canada and China have already announced retaliatory tariffs<\/a> on certain U.S. goods, stoking fears of an all-out trade war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gladys McCormick, the Moskowitz endowed chair in Mexico-U.S. relations at Syracuse University, said the tariffs may cause an \u201cirrevocable damage of trust\u201d between the United States and Mexico, with the latter instead leaning more heavily on China, its second-largest trading partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Federal prosecutors have accused China-based companies of producing and selling fentanyl precursors, which are used to manufacture the drug, and distributing them around the world, including to Mexico, where cartels create synthetic opioids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mexico\u2019s leaders may still seek to negotiate with the Trump administration to prevent the Mexican economy from faltering, McCormick said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe consequences of pushing the Mexican economy into a forced and deep recession is that, if anything, it will actually make people have to resort to informal economic activity, which oftentimes is illicit,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fentanyl is a powerful drug used as an anesthetic and painkiller in hospital settings. U.S. drug officials say illegal fentanyl began originating out of China about a decade ago, spreading illicitly in part as a consequence of the opioid epidemic that started with addictive painkillers like oxycontin. Fentanyl is far cheaper to produce, but it can be up to 50 times deadlier<\/a> than heroin, although some versions can be less potent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McNab said Trump\u2019s new tariffs don\u2019t address other ways fentanyl enters the United States, including smuggling by Americans. Americans were 80% of all people caught with fentanyl during border crossings at ports of entry from 2019 to 2024, according to CBP data<\/a> obtained by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe would all agree it\u2019s a laudable goal if tariffs can stop the importation of fentanyl and stop individuals crossing the border illegally into the United States,\u201d McNab said. \u201cBut we don\u2019t know if, at the end of the day, if all this costs us hundreds of billions of dollars in lost economic activity, is that worth the cost of less fentanyl coming across our border?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some states have seen the tide turn in the fentanyl crisis over recent months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dennis Cauchon, the founder and president of Harm Reduction Ohio, which supports progressive drug policies, said he has witnessed a drastic decline in his state in fentanyl-related overdose deaths over the past two years. State officials say Ohio has been outperforming the national decline<\/a> by expanding naloxone distribution and treatment services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cauchon also attributes the 2023 breakup of the top leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel<\/a>, once led by kingpin Joaqu\u00edn \u201cEl Chapo\u201d Guzm\u00e1n Loera, for disrupting the fentanyl market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTariffs may get the credit in the future, but the reality is fentanyl has been declining at historic levels for two years,\u201d Cauchon said. \u201cWhether that continues is hard to guess.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nbcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump says\u2002a primary reason for his new tariffs against the United States\u2019 three largest trading partners is what he calls a \u201cnational emergency\u201d brought on by fentanyl flowing across the country\u2019s borders. Trump says he is holding Canada, China and Mexico accountable for the spread of contraband drugs. “They\u2019ve allowed fentanyl to come into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":39326,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2861,1728,3616,1230],"class_list":["post-39325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-drugs","tag-fentanyl","tag-tariffs","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39325"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39327,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39325\/revisions\/39327"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}