Dawn Allen wasn’t just a voting booth Democrat — she knocked on doors and donated money, including to President Joe Biden.
But after her son died of fentanyl poisoning last year, she grew frustrated with what she saw as Biden’s hands-off approach to the opioid crisis. Now, he says he won’t vote Democratic, and sees himself as a more focused candidate. deadly fentanyl epidemic: former President Donald Trump.
“It feels like a really bad breakup,” the 47-year-old mother of three said from her home in the Chicago suburbs. “I’m really, really hurt.”
Allen is part of a network of opioid-affected families pushing government officials to do more to fight what experts call the worst drug epidemic in U.S. history. Among that group, many say Trump’s tough talk on drugs resonates with them, even though fentanyl deaths have nearly doubled under his administration, according to a series of interviews with activists and grieving family members.
Andrea Thomas, who lost a daughter in 2018 and is a leader of grieving parents who want to increase the government’s response to the crisis, said the fentanyl awareness movement is “leaning to the right — no question.” “Our U.S. government is almost complicit and now has such an unlimited supply of this poison that it’s stockpiling.”
The government says fentanyl kills about 70,000 Americans each year — more than car accidents and shootings combined. The crisis affected Americans of all regions, income levels, races, and political beliefs.
But Republicans seem to have focused more on the issue in their public messaging. Here’s an example: In July, a mother who lost a child to fentanyl gave an emotional speech at the GOP national convention. In contrast, no keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention mentioned the opioid crisis.
Trump often talks about fentanyl; Harris less so.
“We will smash and smash gangs, vicious criminal networks and bloodthirsty cartels. And we’re going to stop fentanyl,” Trump said during a recent campaign rally in Michigan.
Trump has called for expanding the death penalty for drug traffickers, using the military to target Mexican cartels, and stopping illegal border crossings to stop drug imports.
Many experts say none of this will stop the flow of the dangerous chemical. The federal death penalty is rarely carried out, even with Trump as president; Mexican cartel leaders have vast resources to hide, even if Trump takes the radical step of upending U.S. relations with Mexico by launching unilateral attacks; and the government says most fentanyl is smuggled in by Americans through legal entry points.
“To get to a situation where there’s no fentanyl coming into the United States — that’s just not realistic,” said Wanda Felbab-Brown, who has spent decades studying illicit drugs at the Brookings Institution.
But fentanyl activists say Trump is at least drawing attention to the issue, while the Biden administration is not.
“We’re not seen, we’re not heard,” Allen said. “I’m surprised that someone didn’t realize or realize that this is a large body of people, that if we believe you’re going to respond and do something about it, you can win our favor very easily.”
White House officials dispute the Biden administration’s failure to highlight the fentanyl crisis, which they say is a sound policy to attack it. They say they have met with hundreds of opioid-affected families, made historic investments in treatment and seized a record amount of fentanyl at the border.
“President Biden and Vice President Harris have taken more action and more funding than ever before to address this crisis,” said Dr. Rahul Gupta.
Some grieving families are disappointed on both sides. Jim Rauh, who lost his son Thomas to fentanyl poisoning, leads a group called Families Against Fentanyl that hangs billboards with messages highlighting the crisis at both political conventions.
He said he tried to be nonpartisan in his advocacy, but added that “it’s clear who brings it up more often.”
There is no magic bullet
The reality of fentanyl is that neither side has a magic bullet solution.
Fentanyl, a legal drug with medical uses as a powerful pain reliever, has been around for years and was not a major factor in America’s opioid crisis for a long time. But because it’s cheap to make and low in potency, so it’s easy to smuggle, drug dealers have started selling it to opioid addicts and adulterating other drugs with it.
Overdoses and poisonings began to increase. By 2017, when Trump took office, there were 28,000 deaths from fentanyl. By the time he left in January 2021, the number had surpassed 50,000.
In 2019, the Trump administration won a major victory by forcing China to regulate fentanyl production, which led to a decrease in illegal exports from there. But Mexican cartels then began importing the chemicals needed to make the drug from China. Experts say these cartels have made the business decision that increased deaths among their customers is a small price to pay for the profitability of using fentanyl in nearly every illegal drug.
The powerful substance is now available in all kinds of drugs and counterfeit pills, so people who think they’re getting cocaine, methamphetamine, or Percocet often end up taking fentanyl, sometimes with fatal results.
In 2021, Biden’s first year in office — when many Americans are still stuck at home during the pandemic — fentanyl deaths rose 23% to more than 70,000.
Felbab-Brown said the administration has responded in part by removing barriers to drug treatment and increasing funding for it.
“The Biden administration expanded coverage, medical coverage, insurance coverage to include substance use disorder, following on from what was started in the Obama administration,” he said. “It’s absolutely essential to get people into treatment.”
Fentanyl deaths fell 2% last year, which experts say is likely due to Biden’s widespread use of the overdose-reversing drug Narcan.
Under Biden, fentanyl seizures have steadily increased, and US law enforcement has arrested three major Mexican players in the fentanyl trade. Biden also targeted sanctions on Chinese producers of precursor chemicals, though that hasn’t stopped their flow to Mexico.
Felbab-Brown said the administration deserves significant credit for China’s re-engagement with fentanyl, but she said, “I think if the policy really fails, how do we deal with the Mexican government.”
Even when fentanyl, which the Mexican president has openly and falsely declared, is not produced in Mexico, the Biden administration has been reluctant to publicly criticize it. Analysts say the Biden team has been too soft on Mexico, even amid the inaction and corruption that allowed it to thrive.
Felbab-Brown and others say the main reason is that the United States desperately needs Mexico’s help in slowing the flow of migrants to the southern border, which has become a major political liability for Democrats.
Trump has repeatedly attributed the spike in fentanyl deaths to the influx of 10 million migrants crossing the border under Biden. But statistics on fentanyl seizures from US Customs and Border Protection tell a different story.
The government says more than 95% of fentanyl seized at the border is actually brought in by passenger cars driven by US citizens. As of last year, less than 2% of those vehicles were scanned for fentanyl.
In 2021, the Department of Homeland Security purchased machines to scan passenger vehicles for fentanyl, but a significant number have yet to be installed.
NBC News reported on this in March Out of more than 100 scanners, 56 remained idle for three years due to lack of funds for installation. Shortly thereafter, Congress approved $200 million to install the machines. Since then, the percentage of cars crossing the border that are scanned has risen to 8%, according to a senior DHS official.
A compromise bill to address border security would have provided more money for more vehicles, but the bill died after Trump told allies to oppose it.
A spokeswoman for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign said Biden would continue his drug-control policies. Speaker Harris also wants to revive the border security bill and seek more funding for drug treatment.
“While Donald Trump killed a bipartisan border bill that would have dramatically increased our ability to stop fentanyl for decades — by targeting fentanyl traffickers and the American people on the border patrol — the vice president and president increased resources to stop fentanyl. At every stage of the supply chain and fought for more support for Americans struggling with addiction,” a spokesperson told NBC News.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said the campaign regularly contacts families who have lost loved ones to fentanyl.
“Fentanyl overdose is the leading cause of death for Americans, and Kamala Harris and Joe Biden aren’t talking about it,” he said.
Grieving families will not stop solving the problem
As politicians argue, April Babcock says she will continue to pressure those in power.
After losing her son in 2019, she started an advocacy organization called Lost Voices of Fentanyl, which now has almost 35,000 followers on Facebook.
He said he’s glad to see the deaths go down, but blamed it on Narcan, saying, “We’re not going to Narcan.”
His group met with former Trump Homeland Security officials on the grounds of the Washington Monument this summer, raising concerns about border security.
Babcock said parents in his organization have already picked the date for the 2025 DC rally. “Whoever walks into this office, we will hold their feet to the fire,” he said. “Even if it’s Trump.”