The facts of Amer­ica’s fen­ta­nyl cri­sis are bad enough with­out hav­ing to re­sort to fab­ri­ca­tion. Un­for­tu­nately, this elec­tion sea­son has brought more fear-mon­ger­ing about for­eign na­tions — and po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents — than it has real solu­tions.

Demo­cratic and Re­pub­li­can cam­paigns have used the hor­ri­fy­ing street drug to blame and to di­vide, rather than to unite around prac­ti­cal pol­i­cies to re­duce both the sup­ply and de­mand for opi­oids.

It is a sta­ple of Don­ald Trump’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, and of Re­pub­li­can cam­paigns across the coun­try, that un­doc­u­mented im­mi­grants are the main driv­ers of the opi­oid cri­sis. Yet the vast ma­jor­ity of fen­ta­nyl be­ing traf­ficked across the south­ern bor­der is be­ing car­ried by U.S. cit­i­zens. For in­stance, a report from the libertarian Cato In­sti­tute re­vealed that in 2021, 86% of pros­e­cu­tions for traf­fick­ing fen­ta­nyl into the United States were of Amer­i­can cit­i­zens, and that only one in 6,500 il­le­gal im­mi­grant en­coun­ters re­sulted in a fen­ta­nyl ar­rest. Those con­vic­tions ac­counted for only 9% of the to­tal.

Demo­cratic cam­paigns have also stooped to fen­ta­nyl fear-mon­ger­ing, though not to the same ex­tent as the Re­pub­li­cans. Take a re­cent ad from Sen. Bob Ca­sey, run­ning for re­elec­tion, which claims that Re­pub­li­can op­po­nent Dave McCormick has prof­ited from the Amer­i­can fen­ta­nyl cri­sis.

The claim is based on an in­vest­ment made by the firm Mr. McCormick used to run, Bridge­wa­ter As­so­ci­ates, in a fund that in­cluded Renfu Yiyao, a Chi­nese phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pany that also goes by the English name Human­well. The com­pany man­u­fac­tures 90% of the fen­ta­nyl used in the Chi­nese do­mes­tic mar­ket.

But fen­ta­nyl is a le­git­i­mate med­i­cine, in ad­di­tion to be­ing a dan­ger­ous rec­re­ational drug. The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion con­sid­ers it “es­sen­tial.” That’s why it’s a con­trolled sub­stance and not an il­le­gal sub­stance. The fen­ta­nyl pro­duced by Human­well is for le­git­i­mate med­i­cal uses, and while it is li­censed to ex­port the drug, it does not ac­tu­ally sell it in Amer­ica.

In fact, the “Chi­nese fen­ta­nyl” that has swept across Amer­ica isn’t ac­tu­ally man­u­fac­tured in China at all. Chem­i­cal pre­cur­sors are made in China and shipped else­where, in­clud­ing Mex­ico and Can­ada, where the fi­nal, il­licit prod­uct is man­u­fac­tured. Human­well is not in­volved in this sup­ply chain in any way.

To make the ad’s claim even more spu­ri­ous, mil­lions of Amer­i­cans are also in­vested in Human­well through var­i­ous in­vest­ment and pen­sion funds. In fact, that in­cludes Mr. Ca­sey him­self, whose de­clared hold­ings in­clude funds that in­vest in the Chi­nese firm.

Whether it’s Chi­nese phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies or des­per­ate mi­grants look­ing to build new lives in Amer­ica, politicians find it eas­ier to de­mo­nize and fear­mon­ger about fen­ta­nyl than to pur­sue prac­ti­cal solu­tions. Those solu­tions must in­clude ad­dress­ing both the sup­ply of and the de­mand for il­licit opi­oids.

On the sup­ply side, in­vest­ments in bor­der se­cu­rity will have to be part of the solu­tion. The United States strug­gles to po­lice not just its 2,000-mile bor­der with Mex­ico, but also its 5,500-mile bor­der with Can­ada (the lon­gest in the world) and its thou­sands of miles of coasts and thou­sands of air­ports and ports of call.

On the de­mand side, reducing the number of people using fentanyl and other drugs is necessary. The bil­lions in pay­outs from the com­pa­nies that raked in prof­its for dis­pens­ing opi­oids should be used to support non­prof­its work­ing with ad­dicted peo­ple, fund pub­lic aware­ness cam­paigns, and cre­ate new med­i­ca­tion-as­sisted re­cov­ery pro­grams.

For peo­ple on the road to re­cov­ery from opi­oid use dis­or­der, med­i­ca­tions like bu­prenor­phine and meth­a­done can help man­age the worst ef­fects of with­drawal and move for­ward with re­cov­ery.

Nei­ther the sup­ply or de­mand side of opi­oid ad­dic­tion of­fer easy, po­lit­i­cally op­ti­mized solu­tions. Shame on pol­i­ti­cians like Donald Trump and Bob Casey who flat­ten the com­plex­ity of this is­sue for their own po­lit­i­cal gain.

Their con­stit­u­ents feel the pain of the opi­oid cri­sis and wit­ness the de­struc­tion of fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties caused by ad­dic­tion. Inventing false scape­goats in the hope of getting more votes only ob­scures the search for real an­swers and leads to more addictions and more deaths.

— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette