Fentanyl scourge is bigger than Seattle

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell is forming a working group of civic leaders to hammer out a plan to take care of public narcotics abusers and, thereby, transfer previous the contentious debate between those that assume town should have the ability to prosecute customers of illicit medicine and people who consider that strategy lacks compassion for many who are addicted.

I hope the mayor can attain a sound compromise as a result of the scourge of open drug use is a horrible blot on civic life, even because the medicine kill extra folks daily. But, it’s value stepping again for only a second to recollect that our metropolis is caught with this problem, not due to what we’ve executed or did not do, however as a result of Seattle and different American cities are below assault from overseas criminals.

The present driver of our drug downside is fentanyl, an artificial opioid that’s now the main reason behind demise for People aged 18 to 45. Fentanyl may be made cheaply on a near-industrial scale and bought at a excessive revenue. Many of the fentanyl that’s being pushed on our metropolis’s streets is produced and shipped by Mexican prison organizations south of the border and 90% of the chemical substances used to concoct the lethal stuff come from China.

That knowledge is supplied by 4th District U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Sunnyside, a member of a congressional committee wanting into the issue, however none of it’s a shock. The fentanyl provide chain from China to Mexico to the US is well-known. It’s simply that nobody has discovered easy methods to break the chain.

In a press release addressing the difficulty, Newhouse mentioned Congress is searching for methods “to safe our border from the stream of illicit fentanyl and different lethal medicine, assist regulation enforcement in order that they have the assets they want, and maintain the sellers on the streets accountable,” in addition to take care of “dangerous actors in China” who’re on the prime of the “deadly meals chain.”

Concerted motion on the nationwide stage could be welcome. Given the failure of our fractured Congress to take care of a number of nagging crises, although, it’s arduous to get one’s hopes up. Within the meantime, it’s left to native politicians and taxpayers to wrestle with a expensive downside that will persist so long as the flood of fentanyl from China and Mexico retains flowing alongside Seattle’s sidewalks. 

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