Over the weekend, State Sen. Tom Umberg wrote an op-ed championing stronger penalties on fentanyl dealing. As he explained, illegal drugs are now the number one cause of death for those between ages 24-45. In fact, “more people died of drug-related deaths last year than the number of service members lost in the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan combined.”
And it’s getting worse. In San Francisco, for example, 200 people died from accidental drug overdoses in just the first three months of 2023, which would put the city on pace for 800 people dead. That would be an increase of approximately 350% since 2017.
The drug’s extreme lethality and prevalence in many different types of illicit drugs has led to a bipartisan legislative approach to crack down on fentanyl dealing.
Well, sort of. Until very recently, the Democrat chairman of the Orwellian-titled “Assembly Public Safety Committee” put a blanket hold on any further fentanyl-related punishment. But then Assembly Republicans blew the whistle on this anti-democratic stunt, and Democrats (like Umberg) expressed their frustration too.
After feeling some heat – an uncommon feeling for the ruling party in Sacramento – bills to punish the fentanyl death dealers will be heard.
Good.
And then, right on cue, Gov. Newsom came back from his failed Red State tour with his latest PR stunt: sending in the National Guard to the city where he was once Mayor.
What will the California National Guard (CalGuard) actually do in San Francisco? Stand on street corners in uniform with rifles? Nope. According to the Governor’s press release, he has “directed CalGuard to identify specialist personnel and resources to support analysis of drug trafficking operations.” That’s not exactly “sending in the National Guard” like the headlines claimed, is it?
I agree completely with this sentiment that I read over the weekend: “If your city is forced to call in the National Guard to deal with social ills that your voting choices created, I’m completely uninterested in your opinions on how the rest of the country should be governed.”
