Fentanyl keeps cropping up on the edge of the presidential election campaigns. Some Republicans claim Biden’s permissiveness has flooded the nation by allowing immigrants to bring this deadly drug across our borders.

This is nonsense peppered with half-truths. Each year over a hundred thousand drug users die an accidental death from a drug overdose. A major cause of these fatal events is tied to fentanyl. One reason people keep using it is that they don’t drop dead after getting high. This is always true. The deadly drugs that newscasters and politicians use to justify authoritarian laws kill some people while others survive.

The law and law enforcement give users a small choice of drugs. Then, in an extraordinarily vicious act of social ostracism, the drug users get damned for using the drugs. They are dangerous because they are potent, in other words, a little bit goes a long way. When trying to avoid the cops, a drug that gets many people high but is easily hidden becomes advantageous. This is the exact opposite of what doctors and public health officials would want from a drug.  The notion that illegal immigrants supply U.S. drug users would be silly if people weren’t dying. There are thousands and thousands of people who don’t want to get high from alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine and therefore are pushed into the illegal market. Americans were using opium during our revolution. And guess what? They are still using it.

Fentanyl is an extremely potent form of opium that is manufactured, whereas opium and heroin are plant based. As the newspapers have reported, the fentanyl epidemic started when the United States cut off legal supplies of oxycontin.

Drug companies and pharmacies, responding to new laws, vastly reduced the supply of this relatively safe pharmaceutical painkiller. These companies are law abiding, and when the law restricts supply they comply. Their business is legal, and they want to keep it that way.

It will come as no surprise to students of U.S. drug enforcement that no provision was made for the thousands who made oxy part of their lives. Some bit the bullet, obeyed the law, and stopped using. Others, as always happens, went to the illegal market. Evading the law makes potent drugs like fentanyl a good idea.

The notion that illegal immigrants victimized innocent Americans by supplying them with fentanyl is absurd. Drug users were looking for an alternative to oxy. Fentanyl could be purchased by mail from China. Drug syndicates in Latin America avoiding U.S. law enforcement by smuggling fentanyl into the United States. Immigrants crossing the border are no significant suppliers.

Congress and state legislators could have simply accepted the fact that some users didn’t feel able to give up oxy. It would take longer but would put fewer people in jail and drastically reduce the number of overdose deaths if the law showed some patience and worked with users, even those who kept using oxy.

It requires no special act of genius. This is what we do with people who want to give up drinking or become dangerous when they drink. The problems are similar. Drunk driving laws give law enforcement an entry point without authorizing the harsh and intrusive drug laws.

Drinking is controlled. Younger people have developed the habit of drinking water. At parties, they and their friends who do drink can hang out together without a problem. The same thing can happen with drugs that we label dangerous. What makes them dangerous is the bad laws governing their use. The control is exercised voluntarily, which is the way it should be in a democracy that is governed by the consent of the governed.