As you can see from the chart above, drug deaths have come near to quintupling in the 20 years between 1999 and 2020. Partially published reports from 2021 show that the curve continues upward. Anecdotal reports from 2022 show the same.
Notice how smooth the curve is. Beginning in 2016 the curve seems to start becoming exponential. Think of the events and the Presidents during these 20-odd years. We have had the Afghanistan-Iraq War. We have had Democratic and Republican presidents. We have had united and divided congresses (meaning whether one party controls both houses or whether each major party controls one of the two houses). Nothing has affected the curve. No program has worked. No policy has worked. Incarceration has not worked.
Another way to put it is that either everyone is to blame or no one is quite to blame. Neither major party has come up with a successful policy. None of the major medical bureaucracies have come up with a successful treatment program. No state shows any better success than any other state in the nation.
So, why do I bring this up? Well, today, on the Fox News website a story is printed. Its title is “Idaho sheriff sends dire warning to ‘idiotic’ Biden officials: ‘We are on the cusp of complete collapse’
Sheriff Kieran Donahue slams DHS Secretary Mayorkas, says his officers are ‘at war’ with drug cartels.”
It is a provocative headline and an amazingly slanted story. There is no historical background in the story, because if they had included a historical background then Fox would have had to admit that this has been a long-term intractable problem. And, they would have had to admit that the Republican Presidents in charge during 12 of the 22 years also had zero effect on the increasingly exponential curve of drug abuse.
No, the story concentrates on two subjects, Biden and Mexican cartels. This story promotes only the favorite Republican topics of incapable Democrats and evil illegal aliens. Now, since Republicans were in charge during slightly over half of this period, blaming only the current Democratic President is merely, and nothing more than, a campaign plot meant to damage reputations. Second, what?? only Mexican cartels??? Idaho has had a long history of good ole Americans growing and producing drugs inside of Idaho, in the back areas. Why are only Mexican cartels mentioned? Well, just as before, this is merely a campaign ploy to keep beating on the idea that Democrats want open borders, regardless of how much they deny it.
The danger of this story is not that there is no truth in it, but rather that what little truth is in it is isolated from the full telling of the story and then is massaged in such a way as to show the “good” Republican sheriff battling against a foreign foe despite being ignored by the “evil” or “incapable” Democratic president. It has teasing bits of xenophobia and an almost not-mentioned sniff of racism. After all, Idaho is a state with high militia activity. For instance, even the local newspapers have published prior stories on this phenomenon https://www.eastidahonews.com/2020/08/no-body-of-men-a-militia-movement-recast-takes-to-the-streets-of-north-idaho/. It is too bad that all those militia activists that were parading in downtown northern Idaho streets do not bother to help local authorities in doing what a militia is supposed to do, protect the people from enemies foreign and domestic.
Yes, this is a dangerous story because it does nothing to address a clear problem and only helps to divide this country further by putting out very distorted information. The core is true but distorted by the way it is presented and by the quotes and headlines that were chosen.
Inevitably when I write this type of blog post, there is the person who claims that this shows that I am a supporter of one or another party. I have already written more than one Facebook post that jumped on the far-left. This time I am jumping on the misleading-right. The sad part is that I have to put in this disclaimer.
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