You know that columnists and newspapers that comment on the less angry shows my pine for those days when you all lived in washington and you all hung out after work. Is that a naove way of looking at how washington should operate now . In terms of . Fighting bipartisan consensus and making sure the process works . Make the first thing is, when people know each other, its harder to hate. Who among us does have a member of our family or coworker, or someone that you have disagreements with . You know them holistically as a person. You dont just know who they voted for or how they voted on the last bill, you dont just know of a sticker on the car, you know them as a person, a father, mother, neighbor, or some of the did you a favor. That is always important. In the senate, that happens more. The communities are smaller. We work with people. You have to make a point of seeking it. I dont know if we will ever get back to a time where everyone lives in washington and they vacation on the weekends for many reasons. I dont think we necessarily need to have that in order to have a level of cooperation, and know each other holistically. In the end, you may not agree on 9 out of 10 things, but you can work on things that you pa have common interest on. I go back to what i said, the most coveted thing in washington is the bipartisan cosponsor. Everybody wants one. A major bill more attractive and more likely to pass. It makes it easier to do that when you know that person personally. There was a time when we were passing so many bills that people started to mistake us for one another. That happens. I think senator coontz will tell you that as well. There are people that you create those relationships with. That is include traveling abroad. There is a subject that has earned a lot of attention. I want to quote something that senator matt romney said. He called the senate a club for old men. Av the average age in the and it is 63 years old. You are both under average in that regard. You are 60 and 52. In your view, senator chris , how old is too old to serve in the United States senate . It is less a matter of years as it is capability, focus, and engagement. I had a debate on this senate floor about a decade ago about term limits. There is a basic difference between structurally having an age limit or term limit and saying, we trust the electorate. This is what elections are for. The electorate should look at us and say, you seem to have lost a step, or i support this person, and i think they are seasoning dear relationships. We will make them a stronger legislator into their fourth and fifth term. Over the course of the 13 years we have served together, we have seen folks younger than us that perhaps did not succeed at the job, and those older than us that passed landmark legislation together. I think it is hard to say, this is the age limit. 65 and it is mandatory retirement. The question of engagement, acuity, capacity, is one that is in front of us all the time. I look back at the last congress the last 2 years, and its one of the most legislatively accomplished in decades. The bipartisan accomplishments of the last congress outstrip and exceed anything in the last 30 years. That is in no small part to the seasoning and capabilities of some of the folks that serve in the senate, and her current president. You not put a number on it . Senator rubio . There is no number. It has to do with your capacity to do your job. Chuck grassley knows everything that is happening. He knows when you are on the wrong side of an issue that he cares about. He will let you know why you are wrong. I dont think it is an age driven thing, its a capacity driven thing. There is one more thing i would point to, simply beyond what people point to. There does come a time, for all of us when you ask yourself, why are you still doing your job . It takes a certain level of fire and passion to do it well and for the right reasons. Whenever the moment comes that you are no longer excited about doing the job, or becomes difficult to get excited about doing the job, or you are working toward a goal, that is also a moment to reflect on why you are still there. I admire people that say i will do what i would do, i will move on and do Something Different at whatever age they make that decision. That is a big part of it. I dont think you can put a or number on it, especially nowadays when we have people of significant ages that are doing extraordinary things. It really has to do with the ability to do the job with the same level of energy and intensity that folks deserve. I am asking this of senators with extreme retiree populations. Many are still voting, well into their 90s. Thats why you have to be careful. There were some proposals to potentially allow a state to appoint a temporary replacement if 70 will be out for a while, for health or other reasons. Would either be abusive or two of delaware or florida considering Something Like that . You make that is a decision of the state legislature should make. It would depend on the context and reasons. There are as many different ways as filling vacancies as there are states. What you are talking about is temporary . Until the senator returns like a leave of absence . I dont know, there is a real inconsistency there. How are you file bills . What happens to the bills the filed and the work you did . Honestly, some of the cases, i hope people that love these people or those that are close to these people would encourage them, maybe it is time for a t transition. Generally, people get ythat right. Monday we are doing great, and the next day, something could happen that could change that dynamic. I did hear about a member of the house that will not be running for reelection due to a diagnosis. I think it is difficult in that regard. It is tough. I dont know about that proposal. Did you make that one up yourself . Ono. No, uno, no. As we wrap up, two unique questions. Senator rubio, you said youre not picking sides in that republican president ial race. What is it that you might like about the floridians running for the nomination . Everybody moves to florida. Yet the city governor and the former president. When President Trump was president , i was a lot to get products that she is with expansion, real expansion with tax reform. I think that the policies we adopted in the western hemisphere. We had Natural Disaster in florida, we do good. Ron desantis has done a good job. People generally dont want to run to a state that is poorly managed or chaotic. That is not what florida is. That is due to leadership. There are other things, tim scott is one of my closest friends in the senate. He has a strong message. They did a great job at the un. Im not leaving anyone out on purpose. Im saying all of these people o provide strong choices. We will see how it all plays out. I dont think people worry about what senators think. These will be highly watched and followed raises. Republican voters will choose and we will go from there. Senator chris President Biden wins another term and secretary of stateops to leave, what qualities should the next secretary of state possess . Mega should be from the same state as the president , at least. Speaking on behalf of three gentlemen of great stature, he he should stand at least six feet tall and have a full head of hair. Look, i have Great Respect for secretary Antony Blinken and the National Security team. He is entitled to pick whomever he wants. I asked for his guidance on how i could best contribute to this administration. His pointed input was to craft bipartisan bills. That is the task i have put myself to. If you look at the last 2 years, the outcome has been very positive. Not because of me, but because of a dozen of those. I was sad to read the atlantic piece on matt romney, and why he is retiring from the senate. It is my hope that whoever is av the next president , and i have a strong favorite, our current president , that he will be served by a cabinet that has the understanding and knowledget of how to move legislation in the congress. We are grinding down into an inability to confirm judges and ambassadors and pass legislation. Whether the cabinet, at home in delaware, or the senate, it is my hope that we will have a next congress and the next administration that is committed to our role in the world, to the rule of law, to human rights as being a core part of our National Interest in fun mental values, and to democracy. At the end of the day, this is the only country in Human History committed to liberty and justice. I dont want to see this experiment end. But if he calls and says . I will consider it. If he opposite to me, [ indiscernible ] i wont ask you that. If he is nominated . It is time for closing arguments. I do appreciate you posting this. This is very important. I do believe the country is in the middle of a real political realignment. I think it challenges both parties. At the end of the day, our political process is much more polarized than everyday people from the normal walks of life. It is important to understand that we will never go back to the past. You cannot go back to the past. We have to shape a feature that recognizes key, core, important things. The first is, nationhood matters. Our job, more than anything else is to do what is in the best interest of america. That does not mean at the expense of the world. I think a good and Strong America is good for the world. That does include having an economy that does expect able bodied people to work. Also an economy that make sure it is reducing, stabled, dignified work for people so they can sustain a family and contribute to community, things that are critical to the future of our country. We are being tested on the international stage. Are not just being tested in Foreign Policy and the military projections and spending, we are being tested and how we perform and behave here at home. People watch what is happening in america. Whether it is january 6 or the things that happen every day in our politics. It influences the adversaries s views of america. Senator ted cruz at this earlier, china is aggressively going around the world telling people that america is a hollowed out nation in decline. Just look at the political process, look how messy it is. Look how dysfunctional it is, they cannot fund the government and keep it open. How can we rely on them to come to your defense . We have to be cognizant of that as we work through our disagreements, which are real. We also need to be cognizant that there are people out there that are frustrated and feel disconnected, and disenfranchised from those that are in power. Recognize that it is real. Where to give them a voice. I hope we can build a governing consensus. We had was during the cold war. We had a little bit to the left and the limit to the right. The marxism on a global scale needed to be defeated. I think we have a similar challenge now. It will take a lot of work. This is a difficult environment to pull that together. I appreciate the chance tonight to help model how the conversations would go. May not be perfect, but i hope it is one more example of the kind of things we can hopefully achieve together if we give it a shot. Is senator chris . Let me tell you about three women. When we were first elected, and came to washington , we were from different backgrounds and different states, we did not know each other. Marco was a highprofile National Figure that had been catapulted to the election. I had defeated someone that went on tv and said she was not a witch. I was seen as the accidental senator and marco as the rising star. [ laughter ] within our first week here, one person, adrian, that graduated from the same high school that i did, that was a Business Leader texted both of us and said, you should get to know that other guy. I think we both literally went, him . She texted us and pushed us until we sat down and started talking together and produce that first bill. We all need others outside of our immediate circle and concerns the day to day things that distract us to push us together. I see the head of providence. Adrian just happened to have both of our cell phone numbers, and was able to get inside our lives and our circles. I have a dearly departed grandmother that was very conservative. She resented every dime of taxes she ever paid. She said me once early, do not ever forget your paystub says legislator. I want to know that you are doing it. Every time you cash a paycheck, dont you forget that you are paid by the taxpayers to do that job. It is my hope that out of this discussion tonight, we will go back to legislating together. We have legislated, in support of israel and security. We are advancing human rights, and challenging Human Rights Violations and advancing innovation and investment in science and technology. I hope we will do more. I went to the National Constitution center, late in 2017, when they were giving the liberty metal to delete john mccain. Joe biden was vice president. He spoke longer than senator mccain in introducing him. Senator mccain delivered a remarkable speech. This was late in his life. He knew the end was coming. If you have not watched it, go watch it. It is a love letter to america. It was a striking night. I went home and said my wife, how tragic that this incredible generation of senators is passing. It is so clear tonight that they knew each other. They knew each others spouses and kids. They traveled together. They stayed in each others homes. They disagreed on a lot of important things. They trusted each other and each knew the other was a patriot, committed to our nation. My wife, as she often does, would not let me put a nail in that, she says that is your y job. I said, excuse me . She said, go find republican friends and partners, or make new friends and partners. And by them to delaware, go to their homes. Sit with them and legislate with them and work with them. That way 20 years from now, other americans might look at the two of you and say, how inspiring to have two such different senators that are willing to legislate together. That is why i am here tonight. Democracy is a verb. It has to be an active verb. It only remains a democracy if we do it together. [ applause ] our thanks to both of you. It is a monday night in o washington. They are doing a lot of other things tonight. There watching football. We will get you there. Ho hopefully we provided a bit of the nudge that senator chris talked about. I know this reporter is eager to purchase pay tonight. Thank you for making the time. This is bipartisan policy center. This is from the kennedy institute. This American University graduate will think the George Washington university for hosting us here tonight. Thank you for watching. Good night. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2023] captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org if you ever miss any of the coverage on cspan, you can find anytime online at www. C span. Org. Videos of key hearings, debates, and other events feature markers that guide you to interesting his highlights. These points of interest marketers appear on the right hand side of your screen, when you hit plans like videos. The timeline makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided in washington. Scroll through and spend a few minutes on the points of interest. Cspan is your unfiltered view of government. We have charter communications. Charter is proud to be recognized as one of the best internet providers. We are just getting started. We are building 100,000 miles of new infrastructure to reach those that need it most. Charter communications supports cspan as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. National security and Health Policy advocates discuss the possible use of the military to conduct the illegal flow of sentinel. They consider legislation in congress that would authorize military force to target Mexican Cartels and the consequences of military intervention in mexico. My name, good afternoon everyone, my name is justin logan, the director of defense and Foreign Policy studies here at treadwell. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the forum this afternoon on an uncommonly wonderful, sunny august afternoon in washington. This is a form on proposals for using u. S. Military at the border to counter sentinel. You will hear a lot of reasons why proposals for using the u. S. Military in and around mexico to counter sentinel is a bad idea. I think it is important to state at the outset that there is a real, underlying crisis happening. Overdose deaths, or the precise data are hard to come by. As near as we can tell, somewhere on the order of 60 and 80,000 americans a year, last year, in 2022, are dying of sentinel related overdoses. Provisional data from the cdc, for example, suggest that there were more than 70,000 Overdose Deaths in the country last year. There is a real, underlying crisis happening in the United States. That helps to explain why politicians have begun to latch onto the problem. In june, and nbc news poll illustrated that the public is quite anxious about this problem. Respondents were asked whether a president ial candidate that supported, deploying the u. S. Military to the Mexican Border to stop Illegal Drugs from entering the country, would make someone more or less likely to for that candidate . Speaking of the public, generally, it made 55 of people more likely to for such a candidate, and only 29 of people less likely to for such a candidate. Speaking of republicans in particular, 86 of people were more likely to for a candidate that favored deploying u. S. Military to the border to counter drugs, and only 6 of republicans were more likely to oppose such a candidate. You have a real underlying crisis happening in the United States. You have politicians roping around at solutions. Just because something isnt marketed as a real solution to a real problem, does not necessarily mean that it is a real solution to a real problem. That is the right way to set up the discussion that we are about to hear this afternoon. I am very pleased to have a panel of diverse experts to get at this problem from different angles. I think they will flow from your left to your right. Brian is a Senior Advisor at the International Crisis group, and a nonresident senior fellow at the right center at nyu law school. He previously served as the attorney advisor at the u. S. Department office of legal advisor, and his work on u. S. Foreign policy has appeared in foreign affairs, Foreign Policy, and other outlets. He will comment on some of the legal aspects of the proposals, particularly in congress for using the military vis vis the cartels. [ indiscernible ] is from george mason university. Her Research Interest includes Drug Trafficking, organized crime, and he u. S. Mexico relations. She is the author of [ indiscernible ] inc. , criminal corporations, energy, and civil war in mexico. She is currently working on a book project about Human Trafficking and transnational crime networks. She has a ba in economics in mexico city. She has a masters degree in Political Science from the new school for social research. We will finally hear from jeff singer, my colleague from Cato Institute. He is the founder and president emeritus of the valley surgery clinic in arizona. He is a physician by trade. He has wracked his general surgery for more than 40 years. In march, you testified before the house subcommittee on crime and federal government surveillance about the drug prohibition and the role the prohibition has played in the ventral crisis. He earned a ba from Brooklyn College and his m. D. From new york medical college. It is best to start off by adding brian talking about the republican president candidates. They would be very tough and use the military against the cartels, but there was not a tremendous amount of details in those proposals. By my count, we have at least three pieces of legislation running through capitol hill involving, or are adjacent to the use of the military vis vis the cartels, sentinel, mexico. Can you talk about what, if any powers those would grant the government for using the military, and what the implications of the legislation would be likely to have . Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here. Let me preface my remarks by noting that because the legal guardrails of the use of force by the u. S. President are weak, it is not necessary that Congress Enact any additional legislation for the president to wield the military in mexico. Regarding the scale of the fentanyl crisis with the political [ indiscernible ], there are 145 pieces of legislation introduced in congress that referred to fentanyl. They cover a broad range of topics from strengthening criminal penalties to increased Border Control and Harm Reduction. I will focus on the measures have been introduced that from the war on drugs as an actual war. They propose other use of military force or the militarized approach to countering fentanyl. The first and most extreme of these is the cartel introduced by dan crenshaw. This is a real deal war authorization that is cut and pasted from the 2001 authorization of use of military force. That is the authority for the u. S. War on terror. This measure reproduces many of the pathologies of that war on terror authorization. It would give the president the authority to use it necessary and appropriate force against a list of named trafficking organizations in mexico. Also, the unilateral authority to add additional groups against whom the president can use force. Because this authorization is so broad, the president would have the authority to launch an indeterminate number of wars against organizations in mexico , including mexican state its self. There is also, in the house, the House Foreign Affairs committee, the project precursor act. It would direct the secretary of state to add fentanyl as a chemical weapon on the chemical weapons convention. Lindsey graham introduced a measure that would designate Drug Trafficking organizations as a foreign terrorist organizations. There are measures introduced in the house that would direct the secretary of Homeland Security to designate fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. Earlier this year, President Biden received a letter from 18 states attorneys general, making a similar request that it be designated as a weapon of mass destruction. The prospect for any of these measures to actually become law is dim. The administration has shown no interest in signing this into law. The danger in these framings, the danger and measures that cast the war on drugs as an actual war and cast use of military force as an appropriate policy tool is likely using force against cartels, we can have drone strikes and blockades, we are shooting suspected drug traffickers. In normalizes the idea that use of military force is an appropriate policy response to this crisis. They make it more likely that a future president will actually use that authority. Again, the president does not need any Additional Authority. To normalize the motion that this is an appropriate policy response for a future occupant of the white house to rely upon. I will do my best to keep this from becoming the representative crenshaw show. There is a lot that he has done with this policy. He is looking at the authorization for the use of military force. It has very clear parallels to the 2001 authorization of the use of military force. I will read you a quote. He has done this back and forth, like hiding the ball on what the legislation would do. He is aghast and says that no one is talking about an invasion or a war with mexico. Rather the bill provides, as he puts it, the minimum authority needed to operate with the mexican military. This is what i want to ask you about, your analysis of this, as we have done with other allies battling internal insurgencies. There seems to be the underlying conceit behind the way we frame this problem. Is it whether you want to frame it as mexico is engaged in a counterinsurgency war . Or is it a lowgrade civil war . They dont want help in the right way, they dont want enough help. What are we to make of this . First of all, do you buy that analysis as underpinning what is going on here . If so, what are we to make of it . I think it is disingenuous, you dont need a statute directed in this fashion to provide the authority. Depending on what he has a mind, that is fairly vague. If you just want to share intelligence with the mexican state to combat trafficking, the president would not need Additional Authority to engage in intelligence sharing. This attempt to walk back the clear implications of this education to distance himself from the clear text is disingenuous. It reminds me of the measures and steps and language for members of congress for the iraq war authorization. After it was used to invade iraq, they tried to distance themselves from their votes. Would it not intended to be used to go to work, the fight despite a set of words where it encourages out. Anytime you introduce a war authorization, it should be taken seriously. Lupe, i want to ask you, we are more specificity about representative crenshaws bill. He had a post, i dont know where he was speaking on instagram, where he talked about having gone to high school in columbia. He visited columbia recently, talking about how much columbia is a different place than it was when he was there in high school. According to representative crenshaw, columbia is the model. He says that the reason that columbia changed over 20 years was because of what American Partnership meant for them. The American Military was working handinhand with the colombians. Our police and Law Enforcement, it is all in close relationships. We heard a lot about battling insurgencies. The american track record with counterinsurgency is not one that people should want to replicate, particularly on the border. It was in one sense, a relief that we did not want to replay the iraq and afghanistan experience in mexico. At the same time, they are seen at the columbia experience is what we are supposed to be replicating in mexico. You have done work on trafficking. You were dealing with columbia in the 1990s. Is columbia good analog for what we should be trying to achieve with the cartels . What you make of this analogy . It is a very bad analogy. Worst of all, the name of the bill, the war on cartels, and cartels as a concept is a foreign concept to use. I do understand that the concept is used in the media. Everybody uses that to refer to criminal groups in mexico. In columbia as well. The idea of the cartels in columbia and the colombian conflict. First of all, we are not talking about organizations. We are not talking about organizations in columbia that come together and sit together, or form any legal monopoly and then decide the amount of drugs that they will produce and transport in order to operate as a monopoly. First of all, the concept is wrong. What about columbia . I dont understand if the representative remembers. It is surprising that he lived there. He does not remember how much destruction this Partnership Cost for colombian citizens. Not only that, what are we fighting . If its a war against drugs . This is a war on fentanyl. This is a war that will leave the country free of drugs . Will it diminish the levels of drug consumption . What happened in columbia was a failed war. Why . The objective was to reduce the levels of consumption of cocaine. If that is what we want, if that is the final aim of this collaboration. We are looking at cooperation between the United States in the Different Countries of latin america. More drugs are coming to the United States then add any other time in history. The Opioid Epidemic now the fentanyl crisis. 1 trillion is being spent on the war on drugs. Columbia had a sample of the destruction of the militarization of the fight, what has happened in mexico . When mexico started to militarize under the umbrella of the Maritime Initiative, this is an collaboration, this is the time when homicides started to increase exponentially. Today, after these years, after 2007, from 2007 through today, we have had more than 350,000 homicides. These are directly related to the militarization of the strategy. They continue, even though they dont talk to war on drugs. I want to bring this up, because we have a slight here. We started to talk about columbia. We were talking about cocaine. We started to talk about mexico. We were talking about fentanyl. This is a graph that was released for the institute of defense analysis through the office of National Drug control policy, which has been involved in the white house. These are the prices at Different Levels of quantity of a pure gram of cocaine. You can see the reagan drug war years are on the lefthand side. Obviously, the years side and we are interested in columbia because of cocaine, what you would want is to reduce the amount of cocaine or to reduce the amount of fentanyl coming into the United States which, as the economics 101 professor is reminding me over my shoulder right now, should have the effect of driving the price up. In fact, what happened is we see here, the price of cocaine went down dramatically. Then, during the hot and heavy years, the prices were relatively flat with a few a similar all spikes. If the reason we are interested in the cartel now is because of fentanyl, the example of the colombia experience does not give us a lot of reasons to be hopeful that there is a lot of reason to be optimistic about making the colombia experience. Thank you for bringing the slide up. We wanted to ask you a little bit of the politics of this issue inside mexico because it is, in my mind, as an elementary Political Science conversion person, it is a little bit of a hot issue. People get fairly agitated about it. The mexican president did not like the idea of an authorization for the use of military force in the u. S. Congress. This was the least surprising thing to have happen in my recent memory but there is a lot of confirmation that this would be a hot topic inside of mexico. Can you talk a little bit about the elite level how this issue plays and is likely to play or would be likely to play from mexican politics . It is my superficial understanding of mexican policy, i cant think of a politically relevant this is a swell idea. There is such a force. Mexico today is very divided along party lines as it is in the United States. Beyond that, the opposition might be somewhat happy with that idea. Lets try to discuss this better. Absolutely for any mexican citizen, just the idea of humanitarian involvement, direct military involvement in mexico, it is pretty traumatic because of the traumatic experience. Not all of that, it is a sense of sovereignty but, what has happened also, a brutality that this can create. The brutality has been created within mexico because the involvement. It supports mexican military on the ground but there is a lot of criticism. Many people have disappeared, have died because of the confrontations between the cartels and the mexican military . We cannot understand what that means to mexico if the u. S. Military is involved but the concern is also about intervention. It is about the United States causing massive deaths. Another thing that is very important to consider is, what is a Mexican Cartel again . Not all of these cartels the United States have not necessarily after all criminal groups sometimes connected to the drug trade but maybe they dont to traffic drugs. Some of them specialize in different criminal activities, extortion, kidnapping. What is it going to do . The concern is, if you are going to bomb, what are you going to go after . Are you going to go after any criminal groups . Are you going to bomb communities where these are connected to the community itself . It is going to be mass destruction because of the involvement of an army that does not understand the dynamics of what is happening or taking place in this country. Definitely, some parts of the opposition were criticizing the lack of results with regards to the criminal groups. Not all these groups are connected to Drug Trafficking or fentanyl. That is something we need to understand. Some of these groups, the mexican war on drugs for the military strategy. They have divided themselves and they have become conflicts of that. They specialized in different criminal activities. It is not a war on cartels, it is a war on the mexican people. This is the way mexicans proceed. The real ambivalence, wherever you look, there is a bad option. It can only get worse. I wanted to get back to fentanyl because the discussion in congress and elsewhere has drifted from the suppose it animated problem which is a bunch of people overdosing and dying on fentanyl in the United States has gone to the Mexican Cartel. I want to bring it back to fentanyl. 70 or so thousand people overdosing or dying in fentanyl related overdoses, a pretty big problem. We should all be open to Plausible Solutions or partial solutions to that problem. Why are 70,000 people a year keeling over dead from fentanyl . Is there something unique about fentanyl . Is there something unique about the zeitgeist in america in 2023 . Is it all drug prohibition and the things that we know about how drug prohibition works . Why is this happening . It is important not to look at this in a vacuum. First of all, fentanyl is a legal term a suitable drug that has been around for 50 years. If anyone has had any sort of surgery or anesthesia, there is a good chance they were given intravenous fentanyl. They received in the Recovery Room to control their pain. They likely would get fentanyl in a skin patch that slowly gets absorbed over a few days. It is a legal drug just like methamphetamine is a legal drug but it can be easily synthesized by amateur chemists in a lab. We are talking about fentanyl as if it is leaving mexico, traveling across the border, searching for prey to attack. It is just a response to a market of people wanting to purchase drugs on the black market and it is the latest example of what economists call iron law prohibitions. The harder the enforcement, the harder the drug. Mission incentivizes purveyors of whatever substance is prohibited to come up with more potent forms of the drug so it can be smuggled into others. During alcohol prohibition days, they were not smuggling in beer and wine, they were smuggling and whiskey. And people are tailgating at a football game, there is a real example of iowa prohibition, they are drinking beer and wine in the parking lot but theyre not allowed to bring any alcohol into the stadium and they are smuggling in the hard stuff and flasks. When it comes to our war on drugs, the only part of this century, the drug of choice for nonmedical users was prescription pain pills as efforts took effect to clamp down on the amount of prescription pain pills available in the black market. Drug users moved next to heroin which became readily available and provided to them. Around the year 2012, those who were marketing heroin figured out that if you had a little bit of fentanyl added to the heroin, you can increase its potency and smuggle it in in smaller sizes and sell it in more units over the border. Then, gradually, that became more and more of a component. In the early days, heroin users were disappointed. They preferred the feeling that they got from heroin for the feeling they got from fentanyl. In the black market, you take what you can get. During the pandemic, things really ramped up because borders were closed. In order to process and market heroin, you have to first get the opium plant and use acetic anhydride to process morphine which is extracted from the opium poppy. There was also supply chain shortage. The drug cartels figured quickly that they could just switch out fentanyl for heroin and the ingredients for fentanyl were readily abundant. Now that those supplychain issues have resolved, it makes big business sense to stick with what is working. I want to warn policymakers that this is the latest expression. We are seeing the addition of the veterinary tranquilizer to make it more potent. I read a report recently that Something Like 40 of all fentanyl seized by Law Enforcement now has is i losing in it. It is another synthetic opioid making its appearance. That started showing up in europe and the u. S. Around 2019 and it is not every lab is testing for it because it is not on their radar screen. The Tennessee Department of health reported a fourfold increase in xylazine related deaths since 2019 in their state. We cant just look at this as like fentanyl is coming over our border, attacking americans. Americans are purchasing drugs on the black market and fentanyl is the latest product that has been developed to satisfy the market. We were talking a bit before about things that are somewhat less risky and more hopeful in terms of having an affect on a diminishing number of people who are dropping dead from overdoses and you had mentioned that naloxone is now available overthecounter, which is something again, none of these things are like something that you want to go out and have a parade about, now someone overdoses, they can be brought back to life. Ideally people would not want to take drugs and overdose in the first place. What are some other things in terms of Harm Reduction . We have these things floating around. We were talking before about this. It is not clear how many people are dying because they dont know what theyre getting. They think theyre snorting cocaine but in fact, theyre snorting an inordinate amount of fentanyl and they are dropping dead because of it or they think theyre snorting snorting a certain potency of fentanyl but theyre snorting a times. There is a certain amount of uncertainty that is causing these overdoses but what are these basic types of things that policy could conceivably do that might have a better effect than a c130 gunships over mexico and not so much risk to cost . Even if we end drug pro is addition, we would need Harm Reduction because we see that in health in general. These are efforts to reduce the harmful effects of whatever activity you are engaging in. It would still make sense but, for example, on the federal level, congress could take steps to get federal legal obstacles out of the way of organizations that are trying to help the community. One easy one is, do we have Drug Paraphernalia at a federal and state level . While many states are taking steps to change that now, up until recently and in many states, if you were to distribute test strips to people that you know tend to use drugs on the black market so they can test what they purchase to see if when they thought they bought the oxycodone pill it was actually fentanyl, you could get arrested because test strips are considered for bitten Drug Paraphernalia. One thing that could easily be done on a federal and state level is not just to legalize Fentanyl Test strips but to legalize equipment to test illicit drugs because now there is xylazine test strips. Some have legalized Fentanyl Test strips so now they have to call another another thing that can be done, since the mid 1980s, now there are 147 government sanctions, Overdose Prevention centers in 16 countries including two in the United States. They are sanctioned by the city of new york. Overdose prevention centers. These have been shown unequivocally to prevent Overdose Deaths, to prevent the spread of bloodborne diseases and soft tissue infections. As a bonus, they have a tendency to bring people in to treatment. A lot of people, the connection that forms from the unconditional concern for their wellbeing makes a lot of people with addiction actually seek help. In the United States, we have 21 usc section 856, colloquially called the crackhouse statute which makes it federally illegal to knowingly allow someone on your premises who is using a controlled substance. Those there have been two operating in new york since november 30 of 2021. We just learned a week ago that they have reversed 1000 overdoses. That is 1000 people who are alive that likely would not be. Technically they are against the law and we are waiting to see the Justice Department already sent some ominous warnings this week. Congress could repeal that law, ideally, or at least modify it to allow Overdose Prevention centers that have been sanctioned by state, county, or municipal governments to operate. Also, in terms of treating people with Substance Use disorder, methadone has been proven treatment since the 1960s in the uk, canada and australia. Since the 1960s, people could access methadone through a primary care provider and clinicians are given a lot of flexibility with clinical judgment but in this country, because of the controlled substance act, people have to line up at day federally and state approved clinic and some states recently, the state of West Virginia has a moratorium. No more clinics. We have an estimated 8 Million People in this country with opioid use disorder but only 400,000 people are able to access methadone. If we were able to increase access to methadone, we could reduce the number of people going to the black market and risking their lives. Just to clarify on test strips, what is the argument that those should be prohibited by the federal government . Do we know . The original paraphernalia laws, anything used to detect illicit drugs. That is in the language. It has become relatively noncontroversial. A lot of lawmakers on the state level are realizing we should make Fentanyl Test strips available although we would argue, why dont you just make Testing Available . The iowa prohibition tells us there will be new drugs coming down the pipe and new testing equipment so just make all testing equipment available. I am going to keep asking everybody questions but i want for wherever people are watching you can ask questions on the Cato Institute website, on all of the various social media outlets. I am going to keep directing the discussion and asking questions of our terrific panel but i also wanted to commend two people there was an indictment in april in the Southern District of new york of the Sinaloa Cartel. I am trying to think of the right adjective to use here. Very interesting reading for a variety of reasons. Morbid and otherwise. There was a very fascinating fact a representative fact by the federal government that basically claims that at least in the case of the Sinaloa Cartel, 800 worth of fentanyl precursor chemicals that the cartel procured in their allegation from china produces street value in the United States i dont know if this is new york city or whatever, 640,000 of fentanyl. 800 of personal yields, 640,000 of street value products. If you say that theyre shading those numbers by a factor of 10, 800 and precursor chemicals yielding 64,000 worth of street value products is a heck of a hard incentive structure to bomb out of existence or i just thought, there were all sorts of different details too but i just thought that was an interesting nugget. I wanted to ask you when we were discussing doing this event altogether, we were a little hesitant to do the event on this at all because we thought that these are some wild and crazy ideas and maybe we might not want to shine a light on them at all but it is quite clear that given the public appetite and frustration with what is going on with fentanyl and the general zeitgeist of the country, the frustration with what i think is futility of the war on drugs, that this will be kicking around for a while. We talked about how frequently it has come up in the gop primary. You talked about the extent to which these bills on the hill are in a blind alley at least for now. President trump obviously has very unique ideas about dealing with these problems, namely to lob some cruise missiles over the border, which he announced to the pentagon officials. The mexicans would never be able to know who did it, which is a unique take. The pentagon did with the pentagon did with President Trump, they slow walked it and he forgot about that idea and moved on and the pentagon breathed a sigh of relief and moved on to something else. You can conceive clearly of a somewhat more focused commander inchief with somewhat more Practical Applications of this idea. You get your crystal ball out here, two, three, five years down the road, is it a conceivable scenario . The au ms is stretching the bounds of what is politically available to talk about. What do you worry about in practical terms coming to fruition . Unfortunately, it is all too conceivable. When those revolutions came out about former President Trump bombing with missile strikes, mexican drug labs and denying that the u. S. Had anything to do with it, it was widely regarded with some degree of amusement and absurdity. I think what we have seen happen since is this notion that what was once offthewall regarded as abnormal has become normal. It has gained a lot of traction, the idea of using military force. Using military force to counter the movement to gain a lot of traction particularly amongst the candidates for republican nomination for president. While it may have been true that the pentagon does what the pentagon does and slow walks ideas it does not like, the more that this idea is out there with congress and the public debate being endorsed by politicians, the more likely it is to habituate the bureaucracy and the less likely bureaucracy is to push back. I have seen the parallels in the last 10 years of other uses of force by the president. For example, when president obama declared the use of weapons to be a redline in syria, that begin the process of habituating the National Security bureaucracy with thinking about military options. Ultimately, president obama did not use military force against syria. He went to congress in 2013 after and did not get congressional authorization to use force and then did not use force. The process was underway where this was potentially accessible policy response. When President Trump came into office and wanted to respond with use of force to further chemical weapon usage, there was not that sort of slow walking from the pentagon. I think we saw something similar with the drone strike on the iranian general where the Trump Administration had designated the foreign terrorist organization. It is not use of force authorization but by framing as terrorists while people bureaucracy start thinking about the tools to use against terrorists, the last couple of years they have been using drones. They have been drone striking isis terrorists, al qaeda terrorists. Why dont we just use the same tool . Those are the risks that i see. The framing sets you up such that the wheels are greased. Amongst policymakers, it is less tenable to push back or slow walk what should be absurd proposals. I wanted to ask you a little more about mexico. I empathize with the Mexican Consulate because the Mexican Government is constantly being wrapped about doing work that we wish it would take or help take our weapons and our bombs and a whole variety of other things. Yet i am not going to quote this again but they are sort of stuck. I think it is fair to say that they cant go the full crenshaw if we want to call it that. Presumably, there are things that could be done differently that would be helpful. What, if you were giving advice, would be some things that you think would be constructive in this respect that wouldnt be potentially catastrophic . This is a great question because we criticize policies and we dont acknowledge the ones that are on the table and the ones that have not gone further. What i am saying is, during the years of collaboration between the u. S. Government and the Mexican Government, during the initiative time, by the end of 2006, when former president of mexico declared a war on drugs, also with the very close collaboration of the u. S. Government. Things did not work well. Now, you have a fentanyl crisis and the Opioid Epidemic in those years, 2006, close collaboration. The next administration, the relationship was so strong. During those years, the war on drugs from 2006 to 2012. The secretary of Public Safety was connected with one of the cartels. In the next administration, the head of the ministry of defense of mexico was arrested in 2020 and the United States. Well, impunity has been utilized by the u. S. Government to say that they cannot deal with their own stuff. Former President Donald Trump said that he understands the mexicans cannot deal with their own issues so he would bring his own men to fight. It is interesting to acknowledge that the Maritime Initiative experience was not as good as we would wanted to have and the current president criticize the previous administrations. He was not talking about reframing that collaboration, having less u. S. Presence and diminishing and controlling the role of the d. E. A. On mexican soil because a number of issues that have happened because of mistakes or maybe other problems with the involvement of the d. E. A. On mexicos oil. Recently, the Mexican Government works on an initiative under the bicentennial framework. If you read what the bicentennial framework is about, a focus on combating this problem to the root causes, addressing the root causes of violence in mexico and drug consumption in the United States, focusing on solving these issues in a different way, combining a number of strategies. Of course, collaborating to address the criminal networks and also dealing with the problem of drug consumption in the United States, focusing resources on to treat this issue as a Public Health crisis. The problem with that framework there are no budgets to further the excellent proposals. All of it is considered but also, internally, the United States to deal with the issue of arms. The arm trade in the United States has different logics than the Mexican Government would have. The Mexican Government did not address the issue of the custom. Arms enter freely. The Mexican Authority piece was putting the blame on the United States. The cartel is explaining the Drug Trafficking issue. If you read very closely these documents that incorporate the high level workings between the two governments, i think we can go somewhere but, the budget and the specific actions have not reached the level to where we have to be at, addressing poverty and equality, to address issues also and to further Citizen Security initiative. All that is there. This is a number that no one has. We have been talking about i have been talking about fentanyl and 70,000 people a year. The drug war in mexico has not been exactly a walk in the park. We dont have great numbers for drug wars down in mexico because we are picking through homicides. We are way north of 100,000 over the past couple of decades that are pretty clearly attributable to drug war violence. A little bit more than that. It is not to say we dont want to be too u. S. Centric. This has been a nightmare with a third of the population of the u. S. Population where we have seen tremendous amount of carnage. As we pointed out, there is a supply problem and a demand problem. You have demand, there is going to be supply somewhere and that is the same side of the coin. I keep looking for a hostile question here i could give to jeff. I am just a doctor so i dont know anything about policy or anything like that. I am just trying to wrap my head around how we would do this. When we were trying to eradicate the cocaine trade from columbia, colombia, we were burning cocoa fields. When we were trying to get rid of marijuana, we were dropping paraquats. Fentanyl, like meth, you can make it in labs. You can make it in your basement. Are we anticipating urban warfare with doortodoor combat . I just want to know. Can somebody explain to me how we would do this . There is a reason no one is explaining it to you. If you read this indictment of the Sinaloa Cartel in the Southern District, you are talking about the precursor chemicals that are not even coming in 55 gallon drugs drums. This has been a country north of 100 Million People. Talk about china. It is a problem of scale. It is the proverbial needle in the haystack. Again, you are better able to speak to the laboratory conditions. Again, we eradicated a lot of cocaine and marijuana during the heydays of the drug war and i showed you what happened to the prices. It is a big world out there. The idea that you would be able to chase this stuff down at the same time in a way that you would put a dent where the property incentives are at the scale that they are strike me as being i said, i hate being the chat gpd libertarian drug lord as much as anybody but, it is just true. I think that needs to be said that you are not going to win this thing. The proposal such as they are are vague and light on specifics. Shooting migrants at the border that are suspected of carrying fentanyl. They are both vague but also overthetop and i also note the u. S. Two years ago pulled out of afghanistan. For 20 years we tried to fight drugs there by bombing drug labs, burning drugs, without much success. That was with tens of thousands of troops on the ground. Some of this stuff has really gotten into inhumanity. It is a word i dont use lightly. We have heard things along the lines of, a president ial candidate to is talking about these proposals for shooting suspected Cartel Members in the United States who had come across the border and the question that seemed fair to me was raised, how will you know they are members of the cartel . They dont wear uniforms or what have you. The president ial candidate responded by saying, the same way we would do it in iraq, you could not tell one person from the other. I said, wait a minute. Is that what we were doing in iraq . This is the United States. It is not iraq. This to brians point, lose the rhetorical bounds that i think should be constraining the way that talk about grant real problems with bad guys. I am willing to grant all of the precursor arguments this has gotten scary and inhumane. I was looking for something really hostile to direct somebody else but people seem really reasonable. Lets see what we have here. Mexican is a major trade and Business Partner of the United States, recently displaced china from the rural trade partner of the United States, only growing more important as the u. S. Decouples from china. How would this unilateral threatened trade, especially given the clause for negotiations and 26 . I would also add, as i was thinking through this before the core unifying principle these days in american Foreign Policy is supposed to be china. It kind of comes and goes by the wayside. The one thing that would really, really set peoples hair on fire is the Mexican Government playing nice with the chinese. If we started blowing things up in mexico, the mexicans could certainly be forgiven for having a state visit. What do you think about obviously this trade and investment question is a very important one both for mexico and the United States but maybe it gets to this question of the broader bilateral relationship. It is asking a question i have already asked but i will ask it again. Absolutely. It is not just trade. Declaring a war on the cartel is similar to declaring a war on mexico. I tried to explain the consideration for the crime in mexico. It is not necessarily related to National Security priorities of the United States. Fentanyl, drugs, these organizations operate in a very different way. We are talking about networks of people that support drugs, corrupt officials, members of community. It is a network. It is not a cartel, per se. How will you identify a cartel then . You will cause a lot of disruption. How many refugees will try to get into the United States . What will be the relationship of the United States with russia . With china . Russia has already mentioned something about this and they have tried to say that they also can protect mexico and mexicans. This will happen with china too. This will backfire. This is a trick libertarian question. Since Harm Reduction tools are so effective, should they be federally funded . No. That is an easy one. They dont have to be federally funded. I think it is important the emphasis on policy should be to remove obstacles to groups that want to engage in Harm Reduction. Recently, legislators in the state of rhode island passed a law that was signed by the governor which allowed overdose Intervention Centers providing they are privately funded and they can coordinate with the county Health Departments to be set up and there are two private organizations that are about to open the first one and rollout in defiance of the federal law. There are plenty of organizations that have no problem raising funds. The problem they have is that there is Law Enforcement and law in their way. I think there is a lot here, too, about the intermingling about this is, again, talking about a few points that have been hammered away at prohibition. This person is talking about Mental Health crisis. There is Something Weird and witchy going on in the United States right now that is bound up with fentanyl prohibition and also something else. Were there policies being presented to mitigate the ongoing Mental Health crisis . I am glad that person asked that question. We are not hearing enough about this. In mid2018, researchers at the university of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, using cdc data, showed that the overdose crisis has been growing exponentially since at least the late 1970s. The only thing that has changed over the decades is, which particular drugs are dominating. They said that they dont even see any evidence that this trend is slowing down. We can expect it will continue to go up. For example, ted cicero and colleagues at Washington University say, a very well known addiction researcher found he published in 2017 that heroin addicts or those admitted to rehab in 2015, 33 said that they initiated nonmedical drug use with heroin. Heroin was there gateway drug. In my generation, you thought you were really living on the edge smoking pot. They call them refers been. Refers back then. For reasons that are obviously beyond my area of expertise, we are seeing a growing number of people who are willing to engage in drug use. Either they are selfmedicating because theyre having mental anguish or they are just recreational engaging or maybe a combination of both and they are willing to take risks these days. You take that and you have that intersect with the dangers that always result when you have prohibition and you create this dangerous black market and it is like a perfect storm. There is a question here wanted to add for guadalupe a. I will see if i can make sense of this. What role does our military play in colombia in creating these in mexico . Where would narcotics supply lines shift to . The question talks about, in the 90s, we rolled up and somehow cocaine kept coming into the United States. Coco was being grown in places like peru, bolivia and they figured out we can make money by selling this to the americans. It is not hard to figure out. Right around that same time, a lot of the processing moved to mexico. It is the proverbial we did this during iraq and afghanistan, the push down and pop up. You push it down here and it pops up over here. To what extent is that push down pop up phenomenon do you buy my story about colombia . If we push down in one part of mexico will it pop up somewhere else . Maybe in the United States. We are talking about synthetic drugs that can be produced everywhere. The precursor precursors can be produced somewhere else. They dont necessarily need to come from china. I mean, this country is so wide. You can have labs in the United States. We dont have information about that but the cost of producing fentanyl in the United States will be much lower. If you cannot produce them in mexico, if you cannot produce them in south america, you cant produce them in the United States because the demand is so important. It is just one idea, right . People in this country cannot think of that happening because this is a country with laws, rule of law. It is not that strong anymore either. This country is suffering from issues. Let me ask you this one that came in via twitter. I will set it up in a different way after i read it. Given the many gop president ial candidates now seem skeptical of you ams there is a broader buyers remorse happening now in this town at large and more inclined toward restraint. Why do you think on this issue of the cartel that they are more aggressive . Is a peer leto score political points . Just as one anecdote, in some of these efforts to repeal the 2001 au mf, one deal that was proposed was, all right, we will get rid of