The Washington Post on Wednesday published a searing indictment of the Obama administration for disregarding a plea from health experts to declare a public health emergency for overdoses from fentanyl, the powerful synthetic opioid that was already racking up a body count in 2016 and would go on to kill thousands of people over the next three years.
Fentanyl is so deadly that its most dedicated adversaries compare it to a weapon of mass destruction, a chemical weapons attack by China launched across the U.S. border. Whatever one thinks about the motivations of fentanyl smugglers – greed and/or the desire to kill as many Americans as possible – the drug is so potent that it literally could be used as a chemical weapon, and one suitcase full of the stuff could depopulate a city.
The gist of the Washington Post story is that 11 nationally-recognized health experts sent a private letter to Obama administration officials in May 2016 describing the spread of fentanyl as an “extraordinary public health challenge” and asking President Barack Obama to declare a public health emergency. Among the recipients of the letter were Obama’s drug czar and the head of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
The Obama administration did not grant this request, Congress did not allocate enough money to combat fentanyl, the U.S. border was left unsecured, CDC was oddly slow in collating data on fentanyl overdose deaths, and the drug went on to kill more Americans than the Vietnam War. It killed so many people that it dragged the average American life expectancy down. – READ MORE