Republican politicians are not just incorrigible drug warriors; they also have a death wish, but not for themselves. Not only do they want to lock people in cages for possessing too much of a plant or a substance that the government doesn’t approve of, they are once again openly calling for the federal government to kill drug dealers.
Yes, these are the same Republicans who claim to be prolife. But their prolife stance applies only to babies in the womb. If you are a “terrorist,” a “militant,” an “insurgent,” or just in the wrong place at the wrong time in some foreign country that the United States has no business bombing or sending troops to, Republicans want you dead. And if you supply fentanyl or other dangerous drugs to willing buyers, then they want you dead as well.
Back in 1996, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) introduced the Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996 (H.R.4170) “to provide a sentence of death for certain importations of significant quantities of controlled substances.” Thankfully, the bill died in committee.
In a 2011 interview, Gingrich stood by that bill, which covered “ for example, the leader of a cartel.” However, in doing so, he smeared Ron Paul: “You can either be in the Ron Paul tradition and say there’s nothing wrong with heroin and cocaine or you can be in the tradition that says, ‘These kind of addictive drugs are terrible, they deprive you of full citizenship and they lead you to a dependency which is antithetical to being an American.’”
Earlier this year, in a speech to the America First Policy Institute, former president Donald Trump weighed in on the right punishment for drug dealers:
The penalties should be very, very severe. If you look at countries throughout the world, the ones that don’t have a drug problem are ones that institute a very quick trial death penalty sentence for drug dealers.
It sounds horrible, doesn’t it? But you know what? That’s the ones that don’t have any problem. It doesn’t take 15 years in court. It goes quickly, and you absolutely — you execute a drug dealer, and you’ll save 500 lives.
It’s terrible to say, but you take a look at every country in this world that doesn’t have a problem with drugs, they have a very strong death penalty for people that sell drugs.
And now, Florida senator Marco Rubio, along with Republican senators Tom Cotton (Ark.), Ted Cruz (Tex.), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Josh Hawley (Mo.), Rick Scott (Fla.), Bill Hagerty (Tenn.), Roger Wicker (Miss.), Bill Cassidy (Lou.), John Cornyn (Tex.), Mike Braun (Ind.), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), and Cindy Hyde-Smith (Miss.), have introduced the “Felony Murder for Deadly Fentanyl Distribution Act (S.4876). It is a short bill that simply amends section 1111, subsections a, b, and c, of title 18, U.S. Code, to make fentanyl distribution resulting in death punishable as felony murder, of which the sentence is life in prison or the death penalty.
But the fact is that distributing fentanyl that causes death is already a federal crime resulting in a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life in prison. The purpose of this new bill, then, is just to threaten people with death if they dare to sell someone fentanyl or a fentanyl-laced drug and they have a fatal overdose. How long after someone ingests fentanyl is a seller held responsible for the user’s death? The bill doesn’t say.
I note that Nikolas Cruz, who was just convicted of murdering 17 people and injuring 17 others during a school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, was spared the death penalty for his heinous act by a jury that recommended he be sentenced to life in prison without parole instead.
In the new Republican “Commitment to America,” under the promise to “reduce crime and protect public safety,” the claims are made that “300 Americans die from fentanyl poisoning every week” and that “illicit fentanyl is flowing into our country and robbing an entire generation of Americans from a chance at the life they deserve.”
There are three things that these Republicans just don’t get.
First, it is U.S. citizens smuggling fentanyl through legal ports of entry that are primarily responsible for the flood of fentanyl coming into the United States. According to a recent report:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has reported an upward trend in fentanyl seizures over the past few years. From 2,800 pounds seized in FY 2019, CBP seized 11,200 pounds of fentanyl in FY 2021 and 12,900 pounds in FY 2022 through the end of August.
Seizures conducted by two distinct bodies within CBP combine to yield those numbers. The first, the Office of Field Operations (OFO), enforces immigration and customs laws at ports of entry—points where someone may lawfully enter the United States. The second is U.S. Border Patrol, which intercepts undocumented individuals and illegally imported goods between those ports of entry.
The vast majority of fentanyl seized in recent years has been obtained by the OFO, not Border Patrol. The drug was mainly seized from smugglers at legal ports of entry, not illegal border crossings. OFO seizures amounted to 2,600 pounds in 2019 (93 percent of the total fentanyl seized by CBP), 4,000 pounds in 2020 (83 percent), 10,200 pounds in 2021 (91 percent), and 10,900 pounds so far in 2022 (84 percent).
And China is not targeting American kids with “rainbow fentanyl.”
Second, thousands of Americans want to use fentanyl and other illicit drugs that can kill them. They know they are taking a risk when they use or abuse these drugs. They know they are taking a risk when they ingest powder or a pill that might contain fentanyl. Is it the job of government to keep people from harming themselves? President Reagan may have been a drug warrior, but he was an inconsistent one. He once famously, and rightly, remarked: “Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”
And third, a free society has to include the freedom to manufacture, buy, sell, use, or abuse drugs or any kind. Taking illicit drugs might be risky, dangerous, immoral, sinful, unhealthy, foolish, or deadly, but a society that criminalizes these things is an authoritarian society, not a free society.
Fentanyl may be dangerous, but it’s not as dangerous as Republican busybodies are to individual liberty and personal responsibility.