tags: Press Releases

When It Comes to Fentanyl and the Opioid Crisis, the GOP Would Rather Play Politics than Save Lives

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NRSC ad in Nevada Senate race shows divide and distract, rather than unite and solve, form GOP campaign tactics

Washington, DC – Republicans are once again using divisive scare tactics and lies around the opioid crisis to try to attack Democrats and distract from the extremism of GOP candidates like Adam Laxalt (R-NV). The latest example is a National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) Spanish language ad in the Nevada Senate race, attempting to blame Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) for not preventing “dangerous drugs” such as fentanyl from “flooding our streets” (America’s Voice translation of ad). An accompanying NRSC tweet in English attacked the Senator for voting “against the funds needed to combat drug trafficking on the Southern border.”

As usual with anything related to attacking Democrats on immigrants or immigration, the truth is much different than the Republican Party’s narrative. Here are several key points to know about the related issues:

  1. Fentanyl comes through ports of entry and most Republicans voted against related funding. 99% of all drugs interdicted at the border are brought in through ports of entry by cars, trucks, boats, and planes – not by migrants and asylum seekers (see assessments by the DEA and CBP for more). Yet many of the same Republicans who are attempting to politicize the opioid crisis voted against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which included $430 million to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for the construction and modernization of land ports of entry.
  2. Fentanyl and the opioid crisis are not immigration issues. The issues around fentanyl and the opioid crisis are complicated and multi-dimensional, involving international trade, healthcare, public health, corporate accountability, and an array of law enforcement measures to tackle criminal syndicates and combat cartels. But, the one thing it is not is an immigration issue. Unfortunately, that is exactly where a cynical GOP puts its emphasis in order to place blame on immigrants and Democrats. 
  3. The Nevada ad is part of a larger ongoing divide and distract midterm attack by Adam Laxalt and the GOP against Democrats. Frequently, the GOP attacks insinuate that immigrants and asylum seekers are somehow bringing deadly drugs into the country. The Republican lie – pinning blame for fentanyl deaths on immigrants and Democrats’ border record – has become a key attack line in the GOP’s midterm strategy. This includes Laxalt who has made this line of attack a recurring theme of his campaign. Over the weekend he tweeted the familiar, but nonsensical, attack that fentanyl interdiction is bad and somehow evidence of “open borders” when in fact, interdiction of drug shipments demonstrates how drugs are being intercepted and prevented from entering the country. 
  4. The real Trump and GOP record is abysmal. Overdose deaths from fentanyl are, unfortunately, not new and dramatically rose under the Trump administration, while interdiction has increased under the Biden administration, as a Washington Post fact check found: “Fentanyl seizures have increased, not fallen, under Biden. Overdose deaths jumped sharply under Trump.” President Biden made cracking down on drug traffickers a major component of the White House plan to deal with fentanyl. And there have been significant seizures of fentanyl at ports of entry. 

According to Zachary Mueller, Political Director for America’s Voice:

“The new Nevada Spanish language ad from the NRSC is part of the larger Republican attempt to stoke fear, spread misinformation, and divide and distract attention away from their extreme candidates. Republicans like Adam Laxalt are peddling deadly white nationalist and election conspiracies, attacking women’s bodily autonomy, and spreading misinformation about the source of the opioid crisis because they do not have real solutions to improve the lives of working families. Democrats have been voting to stop the scourge of fentanyl, not stoke the fear. The solutions to the scourge of the opioid crisis don’t involve scapegoating immigrants, lying about the border, or whitewashing the GOP’s own record.”