During a press conference on Thursday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R- GA) had some strong words for a reporter who challenged her assertions regarding the Fentanyl crisis in America.
Rep. Green had been speaking about her legislation, which calls for an accounting of all U.S. dollars sent to Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion. Green mentioned that 56,516 Americans overdosed on fentanyl in 2020, a fact she attributed to the “national security crisis that’s happening in our country while we are completely protecting another country’s border and also waging a proxy war with Russia.”
The reporter, who works for The Independent, used statistics from the Cato Institute to assert that, contradictory to Ms. Green’s statement, most fentanyl comes not from illegal border crossings but from legal ports of entry from American citizens. Ms. Green repudiated these statistics, stating, “The CATO Institute is not the Border Patrol.” She asked the reporter if the CATO Institute was down there securing our border and stopping illegal aliens and human trafficking, and drug trafficking. The congresswoman went on to dismiss the reporter, suggesting that he bring a direct source, such as the Border Patrol, to be taken seriously.
In a Tweet on Friday, the Cato Institute responded to Ms. Green’s comment citing statistics that claim that 90% of fentanyl from Mexico was seized at legal entry points or interior checkpoints, not illegal crossing routes. However, the Cato Institute’s response fails to address the fact that the crisis is fueled by fentanyl that is not seized and makes its way onto the streets of U.S. cities.
The CATO Institute has long been supportive of the open borders agenda that many RINOs in Congress have pursued for years now, citing the institute’s bias numbers to justify their destructive race-to-the-bottom policies. It’s groups like this that former President Donald Trump’s original run against entrenched conservative interest groups was aimed.
According to The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, 2 milligrams of fentanyl is a potentially lethal dose. In April, two illegal immigrants were arrested in Michigan after police found 20,000 fentanyl pills inside their car. The suspects told officers they were transporting the drugs for a Mexican cartel.
In October, The North Dakota Highway Patrol (NDHP), the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI), and the North Dakota State & Local Intelligence Center (SLIC) seized over 7 pounds of fentanyl during a joint Border Strike Force. The amount seized was more than double the amount necessary to kill every living North Dakotan.
It seems clear that illegally trafficked narcotics not identified by law enforcement will not end up in CATO’s statistics, given the fact that there is no record of these drugs and the efforts of drug dealers to conceal their illegal actions. Unless CATO is claiming supernatural powers, the institute’s claims are pure conjecture and not at all to be relied on for such an important issue.
