Submitted by Taps Coogan on the 21st of January 2018 to The Sounding Line.

As the specter of another government shutdown looms, it worth noting this:

As we first discussed here, the rate of fatal drug overdoses in the United States has skyrocketed in recent years. Not only have drug overdoses become today’s leading cause of death for Americans under 50, but overdoses are now killing more Americans than other leading causes of death at their historic highs: gun violence at its peak in the early 1990s, car crashes at their peak in the 1970s, and even AIDS at its peak in 1995. The overwhelming majority of illegal drugs in the US are smuggled in through the border with Mexico. Regardless of one’s position on the issues surrounding immigration and DACA, preventing the flow of deadly drugs and associated crime over the US border with Mexico is the one of the most pressing public health and safety emergencies in the country’s history. It is hard to imagine ever being able to effectively restrict the flow of deadly drugs across the border without simultaneously ending the uncontrolled flow of people across the same border.

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