In an unremarkable neighborhood just beyond the U.S.-Mexican border, a deadly business is thriving. Here, in one of the countless cartel safe houses, the next shipment of fentanyl for American streets is being prepared. The synthetic drug, fifty times stronger than heroin, is carefully sealed in plastic before disappearing with a quiet splash into a car’s gas tank. It is a devious but effective smuggling method – one of many.
“Jay,” a drug dealer from Los Angeles, watches the scene with a calm gaze. He knows the business, he knows the demand. He sells 100,000 pills a week in the American Northwest, cleverly distributing them across multiple cars to minimize risk. His verdict on Donald Trump’s “war on the cartels” is sobering: “He tried it last time and it didn’t do anything. There’s always demand. And where is it the biggest? In the U.S.”
These are words spoken with an unsettling sense of normalcy – as if it were just business, not a deadly game with human lives. But that’s exactly what it is: a lucrative business that neither Trump’s bombastic threats nor high tariffs can stop. While the U.S. government claims to be tackling the roots of the drug problem, it ignores a crucial factor: its own responsibility.
An artificial enemy for political purposes
Donald Trump presents himself as a tireless fighter against the fentanyl crisis. His answer? Tariffs on Mexican goods, heightened border controls, and aggressive rhetoric against the cartels. But a look at reality shows that his policies are not only ineffective but distract from the real causes. The fentanyl crisis did not begin with the cartels but with the systematic downplaying of opioid painkillers in the U.S. itself. As early as the late 1990s, drugs like OxyContin were aggressively marketed by pharmaceutical companies and approved by the government without scrutiny. Doctors prescribed them en masse, millions became addicted – the perfect breeding ground for the illegal opioid market that the cartels would later exploit.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum recently put it bluntly: “The U.S. government must take responsibility for the opioid crisis.” But instead of confronting its own failures, Trump projects the problem onto Mexico – a politically convenient scapegoat.
The cruel reality on American streets
The real consequences of this failure are visible in places like Kensington, Philadelphia – one of the largest open-air drug scenes on the East Coast. Here, Rosalind Pichardo saves lives. In a worn notebook, she documents every overdose she has reversed with naloxone, also known as Narcan. The number? 2,931 in the past six years. Each number represents a person, a desperate fight for survival.
She remembers a seven-year-old overdose patient. A little girl, blue in the face, poisoned by her own father’s drugs. Two doses of naloxone brought her back. A pregnant woman, six months along, also saved. But for many, help comes too late. Bodies lie in the streets – on sidewalks, in front of metro stations, in doorways. A man sits motionless in a wheelchair, a dollar bill in his hand, his leg amputated – one of the gruesome consequences of the new drug cocktail of fentanyl and the animal tranquilizer xylazine.
Pichardo sees the patterns. Where heroin once dominated, fentanyl now reigns. And when that disappears, it will be replaced by something else. “The war on drugs has never worked and never will,” she says. Because as long as there is despair, there will be people seeking escape in chemical numbness – and others profiting from it.
While Trump makes bold statements about fighting the cartels, the fentanyl trade is thriving more than ever. Prices for a pill in Los Angeles have dropped to just $1.50 – clear evidence of an unbroken supply. The cartels have long developed strategies to bypass stricter border controls. They use U.S. citizens as couriers, mix their products with other substances, and stay one step ahead of law enforcement. Even enhanced surveillance measures, like CIA drones over Mexican drug labs, cannot stop them. The Mexican government has responded, including with tighter controls on chemical imports from China – the main source of fentanyl precursors. But as long as demand in the U.S. remains high, the supply will remain steady.
The truth is bitter: Trump’s “solution” to the fentanyl crisis is nothing more than a media-savvy distraction. He needs the cartels as a villain to divert attention from the real crisis – a crisis deeply rooted in American society. In a country where the healthcare and social systems are chronically underfunded, where mental illness often goes untreated, where economic insecurity and lack of perspective drive millions into addiction, drug use remains high – no matter which drug is currently dominant.
The survivors of Kensington know this. Rosalind Pichardo knows this. The cartels know this. Only Donald Trump pretends not to know.
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