Vice President Kamala Harris has demonstrated a commitment to improving public safety and saving American lives from the opioid epidemic by supporting evidence-based public health solutions, strengthening border security, and holding transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) accountable for drug trafficking. Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) also has a strong record of supporting evidence-based solutions to save lives from the opioid epidemic. Former President Donald Trump, on the other hand, has blocked bipartisan border security legislation to crack down on cartels and drug trafficking; falsely blamed immigrants for the fentanyl crisis; and tried to dismantle the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which provides access to treatment for Americans experiencing addiction.
Harris and Walz supported bipartisan legislation to secure the border and combat fentanyl; Trump blocked it
Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz endorsed the bipartisan Senate border security and national security agreement featuring robust resources to enhance border security. These resources included funds for more than 1,500 additional Customs and Border Protection personnel and 100 nonintrusive inspection machines to help detect and seize fentanyl at ports of entry on the southwest border, in addition to resources for programs to counter the entry of fentanyl into the United States and take down drug cartels.
By contrast, former President Trump has repeatedly tried to block bipartisan border security measures. At Trump’s behest, earlier this year, congressional Republicans rejected bipartisan border security legislation they themselves demanded, negotiated, and co-authored and which Politico characterized as the “most stringent immigration bill endorsed by a Democratic president in recent memory.” This bipartisan deal, with billions of dollars in enforcement resources to secure the border, was the result of months of negotiations led by Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and supported by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), yet Trump boasted about his efforts to halt it.
This wasn’t the first time Trump tried to halt legislation to secure the border to score political points. In 2021, Trump unsuccessfully attempted to block an additional $3.85 billion in critical border security investments by pressuring Republican legislators to vote against the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).
Harris has held TCOs accountable for drug trafficking, while Trump falsely blames immigrants
Harris has worked hard to tackle the overdose epidemic and hold TCOs accountable for drug trafficking and other criminal activity throughout her career.
As vice president, Harris has brought together top state law enforcement officials to enhance enforcement efforts against TCO drug trafficking, including by pursuing enforcement action against those financing TCO operations.
As attorney general (AG) of California, Harris led a delegation of state AGs to Mexico to strengthen collaborative efforts between Mexico and the United States to combat money laundering; high-tech crime; and the trafficking of drugs, people, and weapons. Her leadership in taking on transnational organized crime resulted in enhanced intelligence sharing from Mexican authorities to U.S. law enforcement. Harris also spearheaded a comprehensive report about tackling TCOs and drug trafficking, calling for sustained law enforcement funding and increased collaboration and operational coordination between federal, state, and local governments.
More than 90 percent of the fentanyl smuggled into the United States seized by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) comes through legal ports of entry. Yet instead of focusing on evidence-based border security solutions such as nonintrusive inspection systems that detect fentanyl and other contraband, Trump was obsessed with building a wall along the southern border, even though experts have regularly said that a border wall would be ineffective at stopping drugs and costly for U.S. taxpayers. In fact, Trump diverted billions of dollars from military and counternarcotics funding for his border wall, risking national security, according to a U.S. Air Force report, and hurting military readiness.
Furthermore, Trump’s signature “zero tolerance” immigration policy not only resulted in family separations that the American Academy of Pediatrics characterized as “government-sanctioned child abuse,” but it also diverted resources that could have been dedicated to prosecuting drug smuggling and other crimes. Interviews of federal judges in southwest border districts presented in the Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General’s review of the zero-tolerance policy’s implementation reveal that in the Southern District of California, “felony cases involving other types of crimes dropped in the district during this time”—drug smuggling prosecutions, for instance, were referred to the state—while in the Western District of Texas, “individuals with significant criminal histories were falling through the cracks because DHS and DOJ were trying to move the [immigration] cases through the system so quickly.”
86.4%
of individuals sentenced for fentanyl trafficking were U.S. citizens in FY 2023.
In contrast to Harris’ strong leadership to hold TCOs accountable for drug trafficking, Trump has wrongly blamed immigrants for the fentanyl crisis in an attempt to distract Americans from his mismanagement of the opioid epidemic. In addition to inflating the number of annual fentanyl deaths and misrepresenting trends, Trump spread a false and dangerous narrative that wrongly suggested a migration solution to the public health crisis, when in fact migration does not bring most fentanyl into the country. A multiyear analysis of government data from fiscal year 2018 through fiscal year 2022 found that “[f]entanyl is primarily trafficked by U.S. citizens.” Likewise, in FY 2023, 86.4 percent of individuals sentenced for fentanyl trafficking were U.S. citizens.
Harris and Walz support proven interventions to address the opioid epidemic, while Trump tries to strip away access to prevention and treatment services
In addition to Harris’ actions to hold TCOs accountable and support law enforcement’s capacity to intercept fentanyl before it enters the United States, she has employed an evidence-based approach to fentanyl centered on public health. Harris has correctly characterized substance use disorder as a health issue. As such, she supports destigmatizing addiction and providing treatment resources, including expanding access to lifesaving naloxone. As a U.S. senator, Harris co-authored bipartisan legislation to direct the Food and Drug Administration to enhance accountability in opioid advertising to better protect American consumers.
While both the Biden-Harris and Trump administrations have called the opioid crisis a national public health emergency, only the Biden-Harris administration has taken the transformational actions needed to invest in services and resources that will save lives. The Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to tackling the opioid epidemic as a public health crisis has included investing more funding in treatment and prevention than any previous administration—40 percent more than Trump’s administration—and expanding the number of health care providers who can prescribe medication for opioid use disorder.
Gov. Walz also supports investing resources toward opioid overdose prevention, including the creation of a Governor’s Advisory Council and an Opioids, Substance Use, and Addiction Subcabinet in 2022. He also signed legislation into law in Minnesota in 2023 that help expand access to harm reduction services, an evidence-based approach to substance use disorder that prevents overdoses and saves lives.
Harris and Walz have also strongly supported the Affordable Care Act, which requires health insurers to cover mental health and substance use treatments, a benefit many Americans could not access prior to the law’s enactment. Thanks to the ACA, these services are now considered essential health benefits. In addition, the ACA has successfully expanded access to health insurance and made coverage more affordable so that many more Americans can utilize mental health and substance use treatment benefits. The ACA is directly responsible for millions of Americans having access to treatment for addiction. In fact, in 2021, state-level Medicaid expansions under the ACA covered more than half of Medicaid enrollees who received treatment for opioid use disorder.
Repealing the ACA would strip this access away from hundreds of thousands of people experiencing addiction, which will harm them, their families, and their communities and will only worsen the opioid epidemic. Harris and Walz have supported the ACA throughout partisan battles to eliminate its protections that have been championed by Trump and Republicans in Congress. As California AG, Harris fought to defend the ACA, filing a brief before the U.S. Supreme Court. Then-Rep. Walz voted for the ACA when it was passed by Congress.
Trump has continuously tried, unsuccessfully, to repeal the ACA in both Congress and the Supreme Court. Just last November, he vowed to “never give up” on repealing the Affordable Care Act. Now that the ACA’s favorability has hit record highs, however, Trump and the Republican Party are trying to run away from their unsuccessful attempts to dismantle the ACA.
Outside of the ACA, Trump’s first budget as president reduced Medicaid funding, which, if it had been passed, would have threatened coverage for the nearly 3 in 10 adults who have an opioid addiction. The budget also would have cut funding for addiction treatment, research, and prevention. Congressional Republicans’ signature health care bill, which they passed in the House with President Trump’s strong support, would have dramatically reduced Medicaid coverage and harmed millions of Americans experiencing addiction if it had been signed into law. Current Republican-led efforts, such as the Republican Study Committee FY 2025 budget proposal—and Project 2025, the far-right extremist agenda developed by The Heritage Foundation—would drastically cut Medicaid. Project 2025 has been estimated to cut Medicaid funding by more than 50 percent. According to an Urban Institute analysis, if this cut led to a proportional decrease in Medicaid enrollment, “approximately 800,000 of the estimated 1.5 million Americans currently receiving treatment for opioid use disorder could lose access to care.”
The Biden-Harris administration’s comprehensive policies to address the opioid crisis have proved successful
Overdose deaths were increasing by 31 percent each year when, in January 2021, President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris assumed office after former President Trump. Following the Biden-Harris administration’s sustained investments in enhancing treatment, prevention, and border security, drug overdose deaths declined by nearly 3 percent in 2023 compared with 2022, including a nearly 4 percent decline in opioid overdoses. This was the first decline in the drug overdose death rate in more than five years. Furthermore, more fentanyl has been seized at ports of entry and thereby prevented from harming Americans during the past two fiscal years of the Biden-Harris administration than in the previous five fiscal years combined, which includes Trump’s entire term.
Conclusion
Harris and Walz have a long history of demonstrating their resolve for comprehensive, evidence-based solutions to tackle the opioid epidemic, from supporting law enforcement efforts seeking to hold TCOs accountable to supporting evidence-based border security measures and strengthening access to treatment for Americans experiencing addiction. By contrast, Trump has a long history of undermining national security and public health solutions to the opioid epidemic at the expense of the American people in pursuit of his personal and political interests.