So it was that our overbaked butternut squash of a president had his voluminous ass flown up to New Hampshire, dragging his poor wife along with him for some unknown reason, to make an announcement about a new policy initiatives to battle the scourge of opioid addiction in the United States. Why New Hampshire and not, say, West Virginia, where the crisis is far worse? Because, Trump said, "I don’t know if you remember, but this is the first place I came for the primaries. And this is the room right here. So I like this room. This has been a good room."
Are you already smacking your goddamn head, thinking that Trump sounds like someone on fentanyl trying to describe why they're passing out in your kitchen? Well, that dumb orange motherfucker also said he was living up to his promise, "I said I’d be back, and we are back."
The speech was filled with the usual Trump shit. He reacted to things in the teleprompter like he was seeing it for the very first time, likely because he was seeing it for the very first time, as in "In New Hampshire, the overdose, really, death rate — I mean, can you believe this? The death rate is double the national average. It’s got difficulties like people wouldn’t believe." No, we believe it because, see, we've been fucking aware of the opioid crisis for quite some time.
Trump briefly mentioned overprescribing as a cause of widespread addiction, even saying that "our Department of Justice is looking very seriously into bringing major litigation against some of these drug companies." He talked about making ads targeting young people who will see commercials "during the right shows on television or wherever — the Internet." And I'm sure you remember how when Nancy Reagan's pal Mr. T did a "Just Say No" ad, we all stopped doing drugs forever.
Most of the speech and most of what might be considered "policy" was all about the evil Mexicans who apparently forced all those doctors to hand out oxy like it's Halloween candy Yeah, as soon as Trump entered his wheelhouse of hate and bigotry, he was happy as a chihuahua with three dicks, just licking like crazy. He repeated the same specious lies, like "Some of these drug dealers will kill thousands of people during their lifetime." He attacked Democrats about DACA, for some reason. He got the gathered idiots to chant "Build the wall" because Trump said, "We’ll build the wall to keep the damn drugs out." Trump had said that "Ninety percent of the heroin in America comes from our southern border," but somehow didn't mention that it's not on the backs of fuckin' drug mules running across the desert. It's on planes and boats, which, you know, fuck walls. And it's in trucks that go through border crossings where there is already a goddamn wall. This is not to mention the shit that goes through the mail from China and elsewhere.
In other words, Trump just preened and pretended, like an inbred prince, as when he ripped into "sanctuary cities." Weirdly, he dragged Kate Steinle's corpse into mix, a death that had nothing to do with the opioid crisis, which, ostensibly, was what the entire fucking thing was about. But that didn't stop him from shaking his jowls and humphing, "Look at this verdict. Look at the verdict. Can you believe the verdict?"
He also said, "According to a recent Dartmouth study, the sanctuary city of Lawrence, Massachusetts is one of the primary sources of fentanyl in six New Hampshire counties." The problem, though, is that fucking "study" was preliminary research that involved interviews with just 20 drug users. As the principal investigator on the study itself said, "I can't really answer where the sources of drugs are." In fact, the 20 white drug users named other places that aren't sanctuary cities as sources of fentanyl.
What really got Trump hard, though, was talking about being able to give drug dealers the death penalty. He practically humped the lectern when he started saying how he talks with leaders of other countries but "I won’t mention names, but you know the countries I’m talking about." And he had a little vaudeville back and forth with the imaginary leader. "I go around, 'How is your drug problem?' 'We don’t have much of a drug problem.' 'What do you mean you don’t have a drug problem?' 'Well, we don’t have.' I say, 'how come?' 'We have zero tolerance for drug dealers.' I said, 'What does that mean?' 'That means we have the death penalty for drug dealers. We don’t have a drug problem.'" Who? First base, bitch.
Ok, beyond the fact that the Philippines does still have a drug problem, there's one big fucking thing that Trump is leaving out there. Rodrigo Duterte didn't just pledge to kill drug dealers but also drug users. And, you know, there's still a fuck-ton of drug use in Iran, which also executes drug dealers. If you think that your average drug trafficker, who faces death all the time from opposing traffickers, from people trying to rob them, from within their own gang or cartel, from law enforcement, is going to give a single soggy turd about getting the death penalty, you are fuckin' delusional.
The one thing we know that helps with opioid addiction is proper medical care. Pain management is a long-term proposition, and people who don't have access to health care professionals rely on meds to get through what expensive therapy or surgery could help. And with the attack on the Affordable Care Act resulting in people losing their insurance and unable to get on Medicaid, with the absurdity of sky-high deductibles and co-pays, people in pain are gonna end up taking the cheapest route, no matter what piddling amount of money Trump tosses at the problem. (This is not to mention the heroin and fentanyl addicts who got there without any injury or illness.)
That's why no other nation has this problem with prescription opioids. Not because of the death penalty or drug dealers. But because they live in countries that, at a bare minimum, give a fuck about their health.
