#TLDR version:

A fair amount of the Republican narrative about the fentanyl crisis seems correct to me, and the left/progressive responses that I've seen so far seem kind of weak. Republicans are right that the supply of fentanyl into the US heavily implicates Mexico and China, and they are right that the fentanyl is mostly entering the US across the US-Mexico border, and so maybe we should put our focus there. Some of them then say we should invade Mexico, which seems to me like a pretty bad idea, but at least Republicans have an account of where this problem is coming from; the left half of the political spectrum, from centrist libs all the way to socialists, kinda don't. Sometimes leftists/progressives try to shoehorn in the Purdue Pharma/prescription opioid issue to make the discussion about "greedy American capitalism", but this is kind of lame because the prescription opioid epidemic is a different (and much less deadly) problem.

Currently it seems to me like conservatives have a more developed position on the fentanyl crisis than liberals or leftists do, which is unbelievable. I must be missing something, but what is it?

#Full version:

As far as I understand it, the GOP narrative about the fentanyl crisis is as follows:

• The US has consistently had between 70,000 and 80,000 fentanyl-related deaths per year since 2021. This is an absolutely unconscionable level of death. It is one of the worst national health crises we have ever experienced, and is basically equivalent to if we were in a major war; typically these kinds of numbers only happen during a major war, but this is happening in peacetime. (For comparison, the US averaged about 100,000 war deaths per year during its four years of involvement in WWII, so the fentanyl crisis is on the same degree of magnitude).
• When people die from fentanyl, it generally is not because they knowingly took fentanyl; it's because they took some other drug that turned out to be contaminated with fentanyl. Fentanyl is extremely deadly; a lethal dose of fentanyl is 50 times smaller by weight than a lethal dose of heroin.
• The supply chain for the vast majority of fentanyl that causes these deaths begins in China (where the precursor chemicals are made), then continues through Mexico (where the precursors are converted by cartels into fentanyl), and then the fentanyl comes illegally from Mexico to the US over the border.
• Mexico and China are both being extremely negligent about this issue, to the point of being criminally negligent. The Mexican government is either incapable of or uninterested in cracking down on the big cartels, and the Chinese government is apathetic about the supply of precursor chemicals.
  • a stronger version of this claim, that conservatives sometimes make but not always, is that there is an intentional conspiracy between China and Mexico to flood the USA with fentanyl, in order to kill off its more vulnerable young people and weaken the social fabric.
• In response to all of the above, the US at minimum needs to completely lock down the Mexican border by doing the following:
  • build a border wall so that smugglers can't just walk right across -Increase border staff at official points of entry, and closely inspect everything and everyone that goes between the two countries - including American citizens, since much of the fentanyl is being smuggled in by American citizens.
• And again, the above is just the minimum that we have to do; we'll probably have to go even further than that. At some point we'll probably have to invade Mexico and fight the cartels directly, since it doesn't seem like the Mexican government is going to do it themselves. And we should be prepared to escalate against China over their complicity as well.
• Furthermore, we also simply need to get Americans to consume less illegal drugs.
  • Doing recreational drugs was always a rather unhealthy and inadvisable thing to do, but prior to the existence of fentanyl, it generally wasn't that dangerous to, say, do some cocaine or MDMA at a party. That is no longer the case. Fentanyl is too fucking dangerous.
  • Recreational drugs are pretty much unsalvageable at this point. Fentanyl contamination is simply too widespread, and reagent-testing every dose of drugs for fentanyl contamination before you consume it is impractical.
  • Americans simply need to stop ingesting so many illicit substances. As part of this effort, we need to revitalize the economically depressed, deindustrialized parts of the country, and we also need to encourage a certain degree of social conservatism and family-oriented living as the default way that Americans go about their lives.
• (this is another strong version of the argument that only some conservatives make) Educated elite liberals don't care about this issue because they're well off both in economic and mental terms, and they are out of touch with people who aren't. They continue to have "luxury belief" liberal attitudes about recreational drug use because, if you're a well-paid white collar employee with a secure job and a healthy social life and a high IQ, you can probably experiment with drugs a bit without your life getting messed up because of it. The same is not true of people who are less affluent, more socially precarious, and/or have lower IQ.

Now here is my question: aside from the more extreme claims that I separated out above as "strong claims", are the Republicans wrong here? What is the leftist or progressive counterargument?

I don't like the conclusions that they draw, and I think invading Mexico would go disastrously, but it looks to me like the Republicans do have the facts basically right in terms of the scale of the crisis and where the fentanyl is coming from. 70k deaths per year is an accurate number. The fentanyl really does come from Mexico, and the cartels really are getting the precursors from China, and both of those governments are doing a rather bad job of limiting the problem, and don't seem that willing to cooperate with the US about it.

One response that I see leftists or progressives make to this occasionally is they try to deflect blame from China and Mexico by bringing up the Sackler family/Purdue Pharma scandal. The argument is basically "China and Mexico aren't the problem, the problem is coming from inside: unscrupulous American capitalists". But this seems kind of lame to me; it's basically a red herring. Over-prescription of opioid painkillers is a different problem from fentanyl, and it's not nearly as big, either. Take a look at this graph (source). Prescription opioid deaths in the US have never gone much above about 17k per year, meanwhile fentanyl deaths have been at 70k+ per year for several years now.

Basically, what am I missing here? Is there a good leftist/progressive stance on this that I just haven't seen yet? Also, have I been too charitable to the Republican position? Do they actually assert a position that's more unreasonable than what I laid out above?