“It was probably the most shocking thing I discovered on the campaign trail.”

U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pittsburgh, said this to columnist Salena Zito in a column the Sun-Gazette published Monday about the nation’s fentanyl crisis.

“The scale, 4,000 Pennsylvanians, 100,000 Americans, and you look at those statistics and people’s eyes glaze over (at) the numbers, but again, that is someone’s family in those numbers. The reference point is how many people died in Vietnam. Remember, 52,000 people died in Vietnam. One hundred thousand died (from) fentanyl in one year. So it’s just so shocking.”

The devastation caused by fentanyl in communities across Pennsylvania, while not surprising, is indeed shocking.

We appreciate the work McCormick and the Trump administration is doing to alleviate the suffering this drug and its peddlers have inflicted on our state and nation. Their leadership, from enforcement in our neighborhoods to international pressure as far as Beijing, is exemplary and, we are confident, responsible for saving lives.

While we recognize that the pain and destruction fentanyl and other narcotics have caused has been a problem for decades and even generations, and that the fight to prevent this drugs from reaching America’s streets will be unending, we are grateful for the significant progress being made — and grateful that Sen. McCormick and others continue to prioritize public safety and the efforts to keep dangerous drugs off of streets — right now, in the present and right here, in the communities and neighborhoods of Lycoming County and surrounding counties as well as in every American community