Gov. Chris Sununu, R-N.H., appeared on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” with Margaret Brennan on Sunday with three other governors calling the fentanyl epidemic a “cartel driven crisis.”
The synthetic opioid that is believed to be manufactured in China has had its grip on America’s youth in the present day. The drug has been seeping through the southern border and has remained unchecked besides the use of “harm reduction” initiatives like Narcan and test strips.
“Narcan works for the most part; we can talk about where it doesn't work,” Sununu said to CBS News. “But schools, you need access points to schools. Kids need to know that, that there is help there, what those systems are, rural access to care is absolutely huge.
“People have to understand it's not a 28-day problem … Sometimes recovery is a lifelong journey. So you need recovery friendly workplaces, you need wraparound housing and those types of services.”
Sununu said to CBS News, “Understand that also the fentanyl crisis, that's now being mixed with everything. It's in vape cartridges, it's in marijuana, it's being mixed with xylazine, and let me tell you if you don't understand the xylazine-fentanyl crisis that's coming. It's horrid.
“It negates the ability of Narcan to revive you. And it's so the mixing of everything, I call it a "cartel driven crisis" now it's no longer over prescription, that's always part of it … The cartels have such access, and they basically are creating their own markets, they're putting it in Adderall, they're mixing it with, with black market Adderall, they're mixing it with Xanax.”
Brennan interrupted to ask where people were buying these drugs that were laced with fentanyl.
Sununu responded: “[The] Black Market. As inflation goes up, more people go to buy their pharmaceuticals offline, and so they're going to get Adderall for the kids offline; it becomes mixed, or the kids try to buy vape cartridges offline. And it comes mixed with fentanyl.
“The dealers know, look, we might lose a couple, but we're going to create addicts out of it. And so the crisis is the mixing where we have so many folks that overdose that had no idea they were even doing fentanyl.”
Gov. Wes Moore, D-Md., said the problem lies in criminalizing drug addiction:
“I think what was said here is a really important point where we cannot go through the process, the idea that we're going to criminalize our way out of this,” said Moore. “And I think we've learned that throughout this process, that we're dealing with behavioral health and mental health.”
He continued, “But there has to be a larger holistic way in the way that we are dealing with this challenge because it is true. We have spent two decades now dealing with a behavioral health challenge, essentially by criminalizing it. And there are long term consequences, economic consequences, societal consequences that I know, in the state of Maryland, that we are aggressively pushing on.”
Along similar lines, Gov. Doug Burgum, R-N.D., said the opioid crisis needs to be understood as a “disease of addiction.”
He said to CBS News, “One of the things that's been most successful is treating the disease of addiction is with peer support specialists, because we know now that someone who's got lived experience whether that's in the criminal justice system, or living with the disease of addiction, and in recovery, that they can help people through it as much as an addiction counselor.”
According to the CDC, fentanyl is the number one leading cause of death among U.S. adults between the age of 18 to 45. It is responsible for over 70% of drug deaths and more than 70,000 deaths yearly.
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