If there were a known serial killer in our area, all of us would be up in arms. Parents would be protecting their children 24/7. Everyone with a carrying permit would be carrying. What would you say if I told you that this killer has taken the lives of seven Lycoming County residents in the past five weeks? Would we not be alarmed? Would we not demand something be done?
The killer is illegal drugs, which has become a huge plague for our country and our local area. At the Lycoming County Commissioners Meeting on Thursday, February 9th, Kate Nickels from the Coroner’s Office was asking for funding approval for an agreement with Steelfusion Clinical Toxicology Laboratory to determine if these overdose deaths could result in prosecution against the suppliers.
The request was a budgeted item and thus routine, but Commissioner Metzger took the opportunity to comment that there are 300 people who die daily in the United States from overdoses. He made the analogy of an airplane crashing. Imagine a plane crashing every day and killing 300 people each time. Surely the government would shut down the airlines overnight and investigate, but we don’t see that here. Metzger noted that the border continues to be bringing these drugs over, and the cartels are prospering as a result.
The statistics back up Metzger’s point. According to the CDC, 110,236 people in the United States died of drug overdoses and drug poisonings last year, which would average out to 302 deaths per day. If this is not bad enough, these numbers keep going up each year. In 2021 it was 80,816, and in 2020 it was 70,029. In fact, the total number of deaths has almost doubled in the past four years. It begs the question — why?
There are three suspects involved in this crime. The first is the buyers. Yes, these are people with serious problems, and they definitely need any help that we as a society can give them. But they have to look for help, and when they do not, they are feeding the supply stream that meets their narcotic needs.
The second category is the suppliers, which Metzger highlighted. A recent NPR report cited experts noting that Mexican drug trafficking cartels are still able to smuggle the deadly synthetic opioid into the U.S. with relative impunity. A staggering 67 percent of those deaths involved synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Some of these deaths were attributed to fentanyl mixed with other illicit drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin, with many users unaware they were actually taking fentanyl. Only two milligrams of fentanyl is considered a potentially lethal dose; it’s particularly dangerous for someone who does not have a tolerance to opioids. Sadly, addicts are using fentanyl more than any other drug because it is the most accessible.
The third group is our elected officials in Washington, D.C., and the Biden Administration in particular. The spike began in 2021 and it was not because of COVID. The highest number of immigrants crossing the border in history occurred that year, and a record number also came from countries other than Mexico. Amazing spikes took place from countries such as Ecuador (four times over), Brazil, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba (three times over), etc.
And why is this happening? An “open door” policy initiated in 2021 resulted in some 5 million foreign nationals pouring into the United States in the past two years. And with it came illegal drug dealers who saw this opportunity and literally made a ‘killing.’ Unfortunately, Philadelphia was one of the drug dealers’ key headquarters, and from there, they migrate their products to our area because this is the largest population base in the transportation connection of Route 80 and 15.
Securing a border is the government’s responsibility, and anyone who has not been in a coma for the past several years knows that there apparently is virtually nothing stopping this continual stream of illegal narcotics into the country from our southern border.
So, the plane will just keep crashing every day with another 300 victims. But the pilot flying it walks away every time.
