Fentanyl Crisis: ‘Awareness Day’ a Marketing Gimmick

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has declared August 21 National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day. Given how extraordinarily dangerous this drug is, that designation might make sense. But the Biden administration’s inexcusably lax policies toward fentanyl prove this is little more than a PR stunt.

Illicit fentanyl isn’t yet up there with smallpox, Joseph Stalin, or Mao Zedong as the world’s greatest killers, but in time, it might join their ranks. Classified as a controlled substance under federal law, fentanyl has legitimate uses as a surgical anesthetic and end-stage-cancer painkiller. But it’s better known as the crest of Wave Three of the current opioid epidemic haunting the nation. (Prescription painkillers and heroin were Waves One and Two.)

PL

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Paul J. Larkin

Paul J. Larkin is the Rumpel Senior Legal Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org).

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The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has declared August 21 National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day. Given how extraordinarily dangerous this drug is, that designation might make sense. But the Biden administration’s inexcusably lax policies toward fentanyl prove this is little more than a PR stunt.

Illicit fentanyl isn’t yet up there with smallpox, Joseph Stalin, or Mao Zedong as the world’s greatest killers, but in time, it might join their ranks. Classified as a controlled substance under federal law, fentanyl has legitimate uses as a surgical anesthetic and end-stage-cancer painkiller. But it’s better known as the crest of Wave Three of the current opioid epidemic haunting the nation. (Prescription painkillers and heroin were Waves One and Two.)