A record number of Alaskans are dying from a massive spike in drug deaths, driven by fentanyl pouring across the southern border.

On May 6, Gov. Mike Dunleavy and key members of his cabinet joined U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan for a press conference to address the growing crisis.

While the gathering was largely focused on announcing a new educational and preventative initiative – “One Pill Can Kill” – which includes a $3.3 million effort to address opioid use and overdose at the local level, the root of the problem is much deeper.

In stepping to the microphone, Dunleavy’s first comments pointed to the border crisis.

“A lot of this starts at the international level. A lot of it starts in China,” Dunleavy said, in reference to the fact that China provides key ingredients to Mexico to produce fentanyl, which is then smuggled across the border by drug cartels.

The actual product pipeline is driven by incompetent border enforcement…

“A lot of it starts at our border,” Dunleavy continued. “And it’s our border – even though it’s thousands of miles south of us, it is an entry point here to the United States. We don’t have a lot of illegal activity coming across the border from Russia or Canida. We are fortunate from that perspective. We do feel the fallout at what’s happening at the southern border, and that’s something that really needs to be worked on, to be honest with you.”

Sullivan’s comments highlighted recent reports revealing that powerful Mexican drug cartels are specifically targeting Alaska, flooding cities and even small villages with fentanyl that comes through Arizona and then to Alaska.

“Alaska is under attack,” Sullivan said. “In 2023, opioids killed more Alaskans than ever before.”

He noted that Alaska now leads the nation with the highest year-over-year drug overdose death increases.

According to the Dunleavy administration, preliminary numbers reveal more than 350 Alaskans died from overdose last year, a more than 40% increase compared to 2022. In 2023, approximately three of every four overdose deaths in Alaska were related to fentanyl, a 75% increase from the previous year.

Alaska’s problem mirrors the national epidemic.

According to a May 6 report from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, nearly 108,000 Americans died from drug poisonings in 2022 “with a staggering 70% of those deaths caused by fentanyl and synthetic opioids. Fentanyl remains the leading cause of death among Americans aged 18-45.”

While fentanyl has been used in the U.S. since 1960 to treat severe and chronic pain, drug cartels increasingly blend it into methamphetamines, heroin and cocaine – wrapping the products in professional packaging. While some people unknowingly ingest the drug, many deliberately use fentanyl because of the intense euphoric high it induces.

Last month, Zack Smith, who serves as a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, testified before a subcommittee in Congress where he criticized the Biden Administration for creating an unmitigated disaster.

Problems associated with border security are quickly becoming a major campaign issue for Democratic lawmakers in Congress…

“If someone tried to design an ideal scenario to allow human trafficking, drug trafficking, and other criminal activities to flourish, they would have a hard time improving on the current situation at our Southern Border. Rather than enforcing the law, the Biden Administration has instead abdicated its duty to do so with sad and foreseeable consequences following,” he said. “[T]he consequences of this border crisis aren’t confined only to the border but have spread throughout the country from the biggest urban cities to even the most rural Indian reservations. And in fact, it is often these latter locations that suffer the most from the Biden Border Crisis because of the lack of qualified law enforcement personnel to serve these communities…”

In noting that two of the nine Mexican drug cartels – the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel – are “principally responsible for manufacturing the finished product and smuggling it into the United States,” Smith said these “savvy operators are particularly attracted to areas with limited law enforcement resources.

The actual product pipeline is driven by incompetent border enforcement, Smith continued. He pointed to the fact that in December 2023, the Biden Administration encountered more than 12,000 people crossing the border each day.

“To put this context, Obama-Administration DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson previously said that 1,000 border crossings in a single day made for a ‘bad day’ that “overwhelms the system” and described 4,000 crossings in a single day as a ‘crisis,’” he said. “During Fiscal Year 2023, which ended on Sept. 30th of that year, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted that over ‘600,000 people illegally made their way into the States without being apprehended by border agents.’”

Problems associated with border security are quickly becoming a major campaign issue for Democratic lawmakers in Congress, including Alaska’s Rep. Mary Peltola, who are under heightened scrutiny for largely supporting Biden’s border policies in the past.

A new Fox News report calls out Mary Peltola for trying to cover her anti-border security tracks by signing onto a largely symbolic letter with five other Democrats to express their concern about the border, while doing little to actually tackle the problem.

As Fox News points out, Peltola’s border record includes not supporting the Secure the Border Act, and twice voting against efforts to impeach Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whom many lawmakers argue is largely responsible for the migrant crisis at the border.

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