The crisis that none of the presidential candidates wants to talk about

And while you may not hear about overdose deaths themselves, both parties have referred extensively to the drug that caused them—Fentanyl. The Republican Party platform mentions the drug, and Democrats reference it 16 times in their own platform. Yet instead of linking the synthetic opioid to the ongoing health crisis, politicians have cynically woven “fentanyl” into a very different issue: Its use to fuel the ongoing political culture war over border security and immigration.

In several ads touting her border enforcement prowess, Kamala Harris promises that as president she will crack down on fentanyl, including by investing in fentanyl detection technology to prevent it from entering the country. Republicans, in turn, blame migrants directly, with Donald Trump frequently saying that migrants are responsible for a rise in fentanyl overdoses. All of this has a damaging effect on how people think about asylum seekers—for example, a 2022 poll found that many Americans, particularly Republicans, believe migrants smuggle fentanyl across the U.S. border. This is, of course, a blatant lie: Most fentanyl enters the country through ports of entry and is carried by U.S. citizens.

When overdoses are primarily viewed as a border security issue, not only are asylum seekers falsely linked to overdose deaths, but real solutions to this crisis are overshadowed and their potential effectiveness is suppressed. Fentanyl is a dangerous drug, but it is talked about as if it were a “weapon of mass destruction” and treated as a national security threat – like anthrax, rather than something that contributes to overdoses and substance abuse. This overlooks how fentanyl impacts the drug supply and who uses drugs in the United States.