I’m fed up with fentanyl. That is, I’m sick and tired of hearing Republican elected officials, or even just conservatives who are trying to get elected to something, scare Americans with a border drug fable. 

That horror story all about how there is supposedly this invasion taking place on the US-Mexico border. Allegedly, a swarm of Mexican “narcotraficantes” are climbing Donald Trump’s big beautiful wall with their pockets full of fentanyl. Then they’re making their way all the way up to the heartland, to Iowa and Ohio and Missouri – nice states that are home to a lot of nice white folks. There these Narcos are dragging kids out of church pews, out of soup kitchens, where they’ve been volunteering, out of their bedroom where they’ve been doing their homework by candlelight, like Abraham Lincoln. These poor and innocent kids, pillars of the community, who have never made a bad decision in their whole lives, are being forced to take fentanyl practically at gunpoint. And it’s killing them. 

Unfortunately, that part of the story is true enough. Kids as young as 12 and 13 are overdosing on fentanyl, a Scheduled 2 narcotic that’s just strong enough and just deadly enough to kill you the very first time you use it. 

In September, Anne Milgram, the leader of the Drug Enforcement Administration, DEA, sounded the alarm about the F word during an appearance on Fox News. 

Quote, “We believe that the greatest threat facing our communities, our families, our kids, is the deadly fentanyl that we’re seeing in the United States that’s being brought here by two cartels in Mexico,” Milgram said. 

Well, at least that part of the story is not true. Most of the so-called fentanyl crisis is a big lie. And the parts that are true are being presented in a dishonest way. A blame-free way, the kind favored by politicians when they talk to gullible voters. See politicians want voters to like them. And the best way to get them to do that, is to absolve these voters of any wrongdoing, and present them instead as innocent victims of sinister external forces, in this case, sinister Mexican forces, which is even better. 

The real national epidemic is Americans’ aversion and reluctance to take responsibility for our actions. And in this case, the actions and decisions of our entitled and invincible kids when they hit their teens and 20s, also known as the “Years of Living Dangerously.” This is the time of life when kids’ brains aren’t developed enough to know the difference between a good idea and “are you kidding me? That’s the nuttiest idea I’ve ever heard.’

Speaking of nutty, get a load of Kari Lake, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in the state of Arizona. All through that campaign, she took a page for the Donald Trump playbook and scared up votes from white people by pounding the invasion card into the table, so hard that she busted the table. 

Quote, “We have crime, a sky high level in Arizona, fentanyl pouring across, and we’re going to take charge of our border. The people of Arizona want a secure border. They’re tired of the crime and they’re tired of the fentanyl,” Lake said during an interview on Fox News a week before the election. 

On day one, she said she would declare an invasion at the border and do whatever she needs to do to protect Arizona. 

Here’s a crazy idea. Lake and other Republicans should show their fellow cronies some tough love and a little respect by telling them what they need to hear instead of just going around telling them what they want to hear. They don’t have to shut down the border or demonize Mexicans. They could go a long way to keeping their kids safe from fentanyl if they could just keep them away from the host of other drugs that often get laced with fentanyl.

That’s right kids. To quote a familiar Republican, “just say no” – no to marijuana, no to cocaine, no to opioids, no to all the rest of that garbage. 

In fact, someone should have taught you that. Those people, they’re called parents.