A column on the Politico website includes a thought-provoking idea on how America could get serious about the damage that the synthetic opioid fentanyl has created.
The column is by John Feeley, a former U.S. Marine and American diplomat; and Joaquin Villalobos, a former guerrilla leader in El Salvador who helped negotiate a peace treaty in that country in 1992.
They say the United States government already has the power to make life more difficult for the Mexican drug cartels that produce most of the fentanyl that is smuggled into this country.
Fentanyl has become the biggest killer among many drugs — a sad list that includes crystal meth, heroin and prescription opioids.
Feeley and Villalobos say there’s a way to knock out some of the links in the drug supply chain. They believe the Biden administration and Secretary of State Antony Blinken should designate these drug smugglers as “foreign terrorist organizations.”
They say Blinken already has the authority to do this. Quoting from the law, they believe drug cartels qualify for the terrorist label because they are foreign organizations engaged in activities that threaten the security of American citizens or the national security of the United States.
Feeley and Villalobos describe the war on drugs, dating back to the 1970s, as “marginally successful at times,” but they note correctly that the demand for narcotics in the United States has remained steady. This, they add, has “normalized” the drug trade, making it seem like a routine part of modern life. It is often sensationalized by movies and television.
“What is often misunderstood in the Hollywood treatment the drug trade receives is that it isn’t just run by foreigners,” they wrote. “The internal U.S. distribution networks for fentanyl are the most essential component of the foreign cartels’ operations because, without them, there are no sales and no profits. And organized crime since time immemorial exists only for those illicit profits.”
By designating fentanyl producers as terrorists, the federal and state governments would have authority to freeze assets of Americans who collaborate with drugmakers. They could be prosecuted under terrorism laws, which carry longer sentences that would serve as a greater deterrent to stay out of the business.
“It’s important to understand who these people are,” the column added. “They are the Main Street small business owners of trucking firms, warehouses and stash houses. They are the accountants, lawyers and bankers, as well as the street level dealers.
“Imagine if they were all now viewed by the American people and the justice system as being just as deadly as a jihadist with an explosive vest. The cartels need American citizens and U.S. residents to make their fentanyl enterprises run.”
The broad question is whether drug organizations can be compared with what most of us consider terrorists — people, usually foreigners, who want to repeat the 9/11 attacks to punish Americans for whatever sins they believe the U.S. government has committed.
It is true that foreign drug manufacturers and their domestic collaborators are not flying airplanes into buildings. Instead, by their participation in a scheme to supply narcotics to a market that is admittedly eager to buy them, they are killing people one overdose at a time.
Recent estimates say that close to 100,000 Americans a year are dying from drug overdoses. Fentanyl, along with other opioids, is responsible for more than half of these deaths.
That sounds like a good definition of a threat to the security of American citizens. The admittedly aggressive proposal by Feeley and Villalobos should at least be considered.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
