No, JD Vance, Kamala Harris Is Not Smuggling Fentanyl In Her Cartel Minivan

Overdoses are way down, you dope.

Mmm, drugs. Photo by Andrey Metelev on Unsplash

That JD Vance sure did strap on a fuchsia tie to tell a lot of whoppers last night! Apparently emboldened by the promise of “no fact checks,” he came equipped with a full-on imaginary universe behind his dead eyes. A world in which immigrants are doing all the bad things: getting big fat mortgages to outbid Americans for three-bedroom houses (they are not), bringing in all the guns that are used in shootings (no), and of course all the drugs. How many lies did he pack into this one little statement, let’s count them!

“Kamala Harris […] opened the floodgates. What it’s meant is that a lot of fentanyl is coming into our country. I had a mother who struggled with opioid addiction. […] Kamala Harris let in fentanyl to our communities at record levels.”

Kamala Harris is vice president. She cannot executive-order anything, or open any drug floodgates, or flood drug gates, literally, figuratively, spiritually, or otherwise. JD Vance knows danged well what the vice president’s job actually is — presiding over the Senate and breaking ties, supporting the president and waiting for him or her to die — but he’s hoping a lot of stupids slept through middle-school civics, and will believe Harris is running some kind of cartel carpool, for reasons like she is both not smart and a multinational criminal mastermind at the same time.

But would you be surprised to know that 80 percent of the fentanyl seized at the southern border is seized from American citizens? Makes sense! If you’re a drug cartel, you want to use drug mules who are less likely to be stopped, like frat bros blasting Lee Greenwood in a jacked-up truck, or soccer-mommy types who will get waved through checkpoints with drugs in their picnic baskets. 

Also, an uncountable amount of the precursors to make fentanyl are comfortably riding over from China in an airplane, with the word “gift” or “stuff” scribbled on the box. With $3,600 and an Internet connection, Reuters reporters were able to order all of the ingredients to mix up fentanyl in their kitchens, like little Nara Smiths. “Lucky had a headache today, and of course I wanted to fix him something at home, instead of going to the store…”

How are fentanyl ingredients able to so easily breeze through customs? Why, in 2016, a Republican Congress changed trade rules to allow packages worth less than $800 into the country duty-free and with minimal paperwork and inspections. Just pinky swear on the honor system that it is not drug-making chemicals, just some nice potpourri or some Temu accessories!

In 2016 Joe Biden was not president! Joe Biden has been pushing for those trade rules to be changed back, but of course Congress has been unable to accomplish dickety-do-all for the past four years, other than some screaming about Hunter Biden’s dong, occasionally punctuated with kicks to the nards from AOC or Jasmine Crockett.

Also, JD Vance’s mother, Beverly Aikins, did not get addicted to fentanyl, Mexican, Chinese or otherwise, which Vance did not say, but seems to imply through the context. Poor Bev got addicted to good old American pills made here in the good old US of A. And she got off the horse a decade ago, before fentanyl was even a gleam in El Chapo’s eye. From a New York Times profile of her (gift link):

Ms. Aikins’s struggle with addiction began many years ago one day at work. She was a nurse. She got a bad headache and took a Vicodin pill [made by Abbott Labs of Chicago, Illinois]. She loved the way it made her feel. She went home, bathed her children and cleaned her house. Soon she began to purloin stronger pharmaceuticals, such as Percocet [made by Endo Labs of Malvern, PA]. She lost her job and her nursing license and, with it, her access to prescription pills. She began to snort heroin.

Here is some good news! Overdose deaths are down, way down, by more than 10 percent over the past year, and more than 30 percent in Ohio. It’s impossible to say exactly why, but Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in November of 2023, and China agreed to do some internal enforcement to crack down on those fentanyl ingredients, and money laundering by Chinese cartels. And possibly that worked, because street drug researchers (yes, it’s a real job!) have reported that the supply of fentanyl has dried up from coast to coast, and cartels are putting less F in the H. Amazing what can be accomplished through diplomacy, instead of screaming HURR DURR KUNG FLU!

Some of the decrease could also be because of wider availability of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, aka Narcan nasal spray, as well as suboxone, a drug that reduces opioid cravings. Possibly all of the above, these things are complicated!

Anyway, it’s one more thing Vance lied his slimy little ass off about last night. A little fact-checking would have been nice, just saying!

[Reuters / New York Times/ NPR/ Cato Institute]