Fentanyl. It’s become a word that sets off goosebumps down the back of your neck the instant it leaves someone’s mouth due to its aggressive developing association with drug cartels, violence, addiction, overdoses, and death.
Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn is all too familiar with the destruction that is fentanyl – in the Dallas/Fort Worth area alone, the narcotics teams have seized enough of the drug to give almost 800,000 people fatal doses, he says, while on the Texas border, DPS has seized enough fentanyl to kill every man, woman and child in America. These seizures are roughly estimated as being only a third of what gets to the border, with two-thirds of the drug actually making it across the border.
Fentanyl’s massive rise can be partly attributed to how cheap this synthetic heroin is, along with it’s being exponentially more addictive than its natural counterpart. Its distribution is also indiscriminate, hitting gated communities, at-risk areas, cities, suburbs – there is no one area it impacts more or less.
“We’re losing, at my last briefing, about 300 people a day. A jumbo jet a day of people going down, and dying from fentanyl. And often they’re first-time users,” Waybourn told Glenn Beck on his program this week.
“Fentanyl is going to be crack on triple steroids because there’s no room for error,” Waybourn added. “We believe that four out of 10 pills could be fatal.”
The other issue directing the massive influx of fentanyl is in its distribution. Waybourn explains that they believe the cartels use major highways to get to their hubs in Texas, which are Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston, then split off from there across the country. While some is said to come directly from China into the United States, the main course of entry is through the cartel routes in Mexico to take advantage of America’s open border, an easy path for entry. The open border has incredibly empowered the drug cartels, adds Waybourn.
Title 42, the order created during the COVID-19 “pandemic-era”, allowed U.S. border officials to turn migrants away from the border, and back to their home countries. President Joe Biden is set to revoke Title 42 in May, but there are many who are opposed to this move which would open the border up even more, including Sheriff Waybourn.
“[Title 42] is the last arrow in our quiver,” said Waybourn. “I think that that will embolden them … we will see more dope, more human trafficking, absolutely overwhelming our border counties.”
Watch this incredibly important interview in full below. Can’t watch? Download the podcast here.