JD Vance Is a Conservative Outsider Running for US Senate in Ohio and Pushing Fentanyl to Lie

After securing the endorsement of former President Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee for the US Senate in Ohio, J.D. Vance went from fooling Kool-Aid to bolstering it with falsehoods. has a plot of its own.

Whatever the outcome of tonight’s election, it will be so accompanied by Vance’s lie that it’s ridiculous that Trump himself might not have tried to do so. Vance actually suggested that President Joe Biden was allowing fentanyl to spill across the border to kill MAGA voters.

“If you want to kill a bunch of MAGA voters in the center, is it better to target them and their children with this deadly fentanyl?” Vance asked Jim Hoft of the far-right news site Gateway Pundit on Friday.

Vance evokes such a vision of the crisis on our southern border that it demands priority over any humanitarian concerns posed by the war in Ukraine. He spoke of a “wide open” field where illegal immigrants – whom he called “Democratic voters” in a campaign advertisement – ​​and drugs were allowed to flow through without being caught. hamper. Never mind that the federal DEA estimates that more than 90% of drugs smuggled from Mexico pass through established legal crossing points unaffected by even the tallest Trumpian wall.

“It’s really a border crisis that’s been playing out across the country,” Vance exclaims. “It’s not just the southern border states that are affected by it. It’s everyone, and it looks intentional. “

Vance later said, “Just like Joe Biden wants to punish people who don’t vote for him, and opening the floodgates to the border is one way to do that.”

Vance’s controversy becomes all the more absurd when you consider that although fatal overdoses have reached record levels, the percentage of whites is no longer higher than blacks – who are less likely to vote MAGA . And the demographic shift has been especially dramatic in Ohio, the state Vance seeks to represent on Capitol Hill.

“For many years, the drug overdose death rate for blacks was one-third to one-half lower than for whites,” the Ohio nonprofit said in a report. “But in mid-2016, that started to change. Since then, the trend has gone in the opposite direction. In 2019, death crosses racial lines. Black Ohioans die from accidental drug overdoses at a significantly faster rate than whites.”

The death rate from drug overdose in blacks is now nearly 20% higher than in whites. Blacks make up 14% of the state’s population, but suffer 17% of drug overdose deaths.

Harm reduction Ohio and federal law enforcement sources agree on the cause of the change: fentanyl, the same deadly new drug that Vance cites in his conspiracy theory.

“Blacks have a significantly higher overdose death rate today than whites, and this is because fentanyl shifts from the source of heroin – the source of the opioid – to the source of cocaine.” Harm Reduction Ohio president Dennis Cauchon told The Daily Beast on Monday. “For decades, for whatever reason, whites have had disproportionately high heroin overdose mortality rates, and blacks have had cocaine overdose death rates. traditionally high. That’s true in Ohio, and it’s true across the country. ”

He notes that cocaine itself has a relatively low overdose death rate. That started to change when agents started using fentanyl as a low-cost potency enhancer.

“Now it’s a purposeful adulterer,” says Cauchon. “When fentanyl turned into cocaine, it caused a lot of black overdose deaths.”

Cauchon refutes Vance’s conspiracy theory in one word.

“Comical.”

He added, “Fentanyl is apolitical.”

Drew Angerer

Vance’s suggestion that Biden is using it as a chemical weapon against the diabolical MAGA is clearly part of an effort to downplay the conflict in Ukraine, where chemical warfare is a real danger. Vance told Steven Bannon’s War Room in February that “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.” Vance has sought to divert us from Putin’s crimes against humanity with a fictional Biden story and a deadly drug that even Trump can’t stop.

Three of the few who were in Congress who voted against sending aid to the Ukrainians came to campaign for Vance after Trump’s endorsement. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia all describe themselves as freedom fighters as they, along with Vance, warn of a major border crisis. gender.

A researcher who scientifically documented facts about both overdoses and fentanyl resumed his work at the border on Monday. Joseph Friedman of the Center for Human and Social Medicine and the Health Scientist Training Program at UCLA spoke to The Daily Beast from Tijuana.

“I’m seeing this up close and personal,” he said. “For most pandemics, like two years, pretty much the only people allowed to cross the border are mostly US citizens and US permanent residents. And fentanyl hasn’t stopped coming, which means it’s brought in by US citizens who can’t be denied entry to this country through lawful ports of entry. “

He came to a conclusion.

“So the entire Republican Party is talking about a weak wall, which, empirically, doesn’t make any sense. It was just a lie. “

Friedman has done substantial research on variable overdose rates for blacks and whites. He agrees with Ohio Harm that fentanyl is the main cause, but he thinks the mortality rate in Blacks is less due to cocaine intoxication than to age differences among users.

“Among black people, the highest mortality rates are actually among older people, like in their 50s and sixties,” he said. “And that’s because these are people who originally started using heroin decades ago and have been using heroin safely ever since. But suddenly, that heroin was replaced by something much more dangerous and the older Negroes were dying. Whereas with Caucasian overdose… you see the highest rates in the slightly younger people. ”

He and fellow researcher Helena Hansen published some of their recent findings in the March issue of JAMA Psychiatry in a paper called A review of the rise in drug overdoses: U.S. mortality rates by race and ethnicity before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their conclusion will be fact based on science no matter what Vance gets at the polls with a lie greater than zero.

“Drug use mortality is increasingly becoming a racial equity issue in America. “