Opioid crisis hits Pennsylvania with 5,400 deaths in the last year, while Casey votes against funding for CPB

Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) wants to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations. | Pixabay/Donald Clark

By Laurie A. Luebbert

Oct 17, 2022

Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) has made no apologies for designating the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels as terrorist organizations, and he is now urging President Joe Biden to do the same on a national level.

“Cartels are terrorists, and it’s time we treated them that way,” Abbott said last week, according to his website.

He has also written a letter to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris requesting that they follow his lead.

“Designation, apprehension and prosecution would also heighten public awareness of the cartels’ trafficking of deadly fentanyl, while signaling to the international community that the United States will not tolerate terrorists who poison our citizens,” Abbott wrote in the letter.

Abbott also stressed that border personnel need more resources so they can be better equipped to battle the rapidly escalating crisis. In 2021, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) voted against a bill that would have appropriated $300 million to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to allow them to better fight against trafficked opioids.

The rise in opioid-related deaths is a nationwide concern. An eight-month investigation earlier this year resulted in the confiscation of $1.4 million in fentanyl in Braddock, Pennsylvania. The cache included about 700,000 doses, WKBN 27 News reported.

More than 5,400 Pennsylvanians are reported to have died from drug overdoses between March 2021 and March 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.

This is not the first time Abbott has brought his concerns to Biden’s attention. He sent a similar letter to the president in April 2021. Abbott said he got no response to that missive.

When the U.S. Supreme Court declared Biden’s termination of the Remain in Mexico policy to be constitutional in June, Abbott issued a statement in which he warned that the decision would open the door to more significant problems in the future.

“Reinstating and fully enforcing Remain in Mexico would deter thousands more migrants from making that deadly trek, and President Biden should take that simple step to secure the border because it is the only humane thing to do,” Abbott said, according to his website.

In the past 12 months, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported making more than 2.1 million border enforcement encounters.