One issue that must be addressed this election cycle is the opioid crisis that is engulfing Maine, and indeed the rest of the country.

Unfortunately, the nature of the crisis has been badly misrepresented. Prescriptions of opioids have actually decreased greatly over the last few years, even as deaths from overdoses have increased. This is largely a problem of illegal opioids, not of people abusing prescriptions.

This is explained in Daniel Horowitz’s online article in Conservative Review, “The Big Opioid Myths and Lies,” and the related articles to which he links.

Statistics on prescription drug abuse have been greatly inflated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by including illegally produced fentanyl as a prescription drug, and by counting those who have fatally overdosed with multiple drugs as prescription opioid deaths if even one of the drugs is a prescription opioid.

The major factors driving the last few years of the epidemic are synthetically produced heroin and fentanyl smuggled in from abroad. This spiked in the early 2010s, corresponding to the time when Obama all but suspended interior enforcement of immigration laws and reduced border enforcement while fudging the numbers by letting in and then deporting people who would previously have been turned away at the border.

To get control of the opioid crisis we must secure the border. While the Republicans are imperfect on this, the Democrats almost universally oppose it. They favor sanctuary cities, mass legalization of illegal aliens, euphemizing illegal aliens as “undocumented immigrants,” and releasing illegal aliens who are caught into the country, after which most fail to appear at immigration hearings.

To get at the actual root of the opioid crisis, we must make certain that Democrats do not get control of the House or Senate in November.

Michael Jose

Augusta

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