Fentanyl and the border story

I have narcaned teenagers in parking lots. I have also heard politicians talk about fentanyl as if it were a column of migrants. Those two experiences do not match, and pretending they do is how you get a wall speech and a still-dead kid.

The best reporting we have still says a lot of the finished fentanyl comes through ports of entry, in vehicles, often with U.S. citizens driving, because that is where the volume is. Cartels are businesses. Businesses use the main road. That does not mean the open desert is a myth. It means if your entire policy is the desert, you are policing the side door and leaving the loading dock alone.

Mexico is a partner and a problem in the same week. You cannot lecture Mexico City into seizing precursor chemicals if the demand is a hundred million American appetites and a pharmacy system that already trained a country on pills. Demand is the part Americans hate saying out loud because it lands on us.

China sits in the precursor story. So do Mexican labs. So does a U.S. health system that treated pain like a subscription. If you only pick one villain you get a clean hearing and a dirty morgue.

Treatment is not a vibe either. Buprenorphine, methadone, the unsexy clinics that still exist when the cameras leave. Locking people up without treatment is a pause. Treatment without any pressure is a pamphlet. I have watched both fail in the same night.

Immigration enforcement can still matter at the margin for the people who do walk with backpacks. It cannot be the whole fentanyl plan. Mix the files and you will hire more people to chase the wrong object while the cars keep coming through the booth with a wave.

My ask is rude and small: tell the truth about ports of entry, fund the boring scanners, fund the clinics, and stop using a corpse as a border prop. I will still vote for people who want a real border. I will not clap for a story that cannot survive an autopsy.