Our presidential candidates remain shamefully silent on the fentanyl crisis

Every year, more than 80,000 Americans die from opioid overdoses. That’s like a passenger plane crashing and killing everyone on board every day.

Fentanyl is driving these numbers, and it’s everywhere. In the United States, more Americans have died from fentanyl poisoning than in the Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam wars combined.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fentanyl overdose is now the leading cause of death among Americans ages 18 to 45. Yet fentanyl was mentioned only briefly during last week’s presidential debate, and only in the context of the border crisis, which appears to be the only time it’s been mentioned.

But there is still much work to be done in our communities to prevent more people from dying from preventable causes. When will the presidential candidates speak out on this?

As a West Virginian and mother of a 13- and 11-year-old, I am acutely aware of this epidemic that is hitting teens (and my state) particularly hard. But if you’re an average American who follows presidential politics closely, you may not know that fatal drug overdoses caused more than 100,000 deaths in 2023, nearly three times the number of gun deaths that same year.

This is not to denigrate the serious problem of gun violence (which is unfortunately back in the spotlight), or any other problem for that matter. But why hasn’t fentanyl poisoning (the term “overdose” doesn’t adequately describe the situation) been a bigger issue in the 2024 presidential campaign?

On the one hand, one might think that drug victims are unsympathetic and that only “addicts” die from them. But that is certainly not the case for many victims of fentanyl poisoning.

As Tony Mattivi, director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, told me recently: “Looking at the faces of people dying from fentanyl is like tearing pages out of a high school yearbook.”

Interestingly, there are potential solutions. Unfortunately, these issues are rarely debated on a big stage.

Take, for example, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which passed the U.S. Senate this summer. As the Washington Post reported, “the bill would create a new obligation for companies to limit potential harm to children, known as a ‘duty of care.’”

What’s the connection to fentanyl overdoses? As Rolling Stone’s Paul Solotaroff reported last July, grieving families say “social media giant Snapchat has helped fuel an epidemic of teen overdoses across the country.”

It’s no surprise that some of these grieving parents, who lost teenagers to fentanyl-laced pills purchased through social media, are now pushing to make KOSA law.

Solotaroff’s reporting also indicates that COVID-19 lockdowns helped to dramatically worsen the fentanyl crisis, driving lonely kids to their phones, where many were fed a steady diet of offers of fake pills.

The next time we as a nation are forced to weigh the potential downsides of a quarantine, we should consider the mental health costs (some of which have led to fentanyl-related deaths) on our children, as well as the learning deficits and negative economic externalities.

Probably the most important thing our political and media class could do would be to devote more airtime to advertising and promoting naloxone (more commonly known as Narcan), the life-saving miracle drug that can completely reverse a fentanyl overdose, if administered in a timely manner (for the sake of disclosure, I am a consultant for a non-profit organization that distributes Narcan).

Many public and private gathering places, including colleges and universities, still do not have easy access to naloxone, and they should. Making access to naloxone as accessible as, say, a fire extinguisher would go a long way toward saving young lives.

As I write this, some states (including my own) are considering how to spend the billions of dollars paid by companies that made, sold, or distributed prescription painkillers that contributed to the opioid epidemic. Those funds should be used for drug education and prevention, as well as addiction treatment and harm reduction, to save more lives.

Unfortunately, much of this money is spent on items such as general police equipment. I would like to hear from the presidential candidates on how this money should be spent.

These are just a few of the fentanyl-related topics that could spark debate and attention.

Regardless, simply talking about fentanyl poisoning at the debate stage could help ensure that more parents and children realize that a small amount of fentanyl can be deadly, that one pill can kill, and that naloxone should be kept on hand.

Activists always talk about “awareness,” but fentanyl poisoning is one area where it really matters.

I hope the moderators of the upcoming vice presidential debate, Nora O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan of CBS, will press the candidates on this issue. They would be doing their viewers a favor by devoting time to an issue that touches far too many communities and families.

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (Minn.) should both have a real interest in finding solutions to this crisis, given their focus on solving the problems of middle America.

American voters deserve a plan. We’re still waiting.

Erin DeLullo is the Founder and Director of Civitella Strategies And a resident of the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. She hosts THE Poisoning podcast and serves as an advisor for Port path.

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