Donald Trump‘s running mate JD Vance spoke at the Milwaukee Police Association‘s headquarters in Wisconsin Friday where he claimed that fentanyl-laced marijuana is turning up pretty much all over the place for which he engaged in a special barrage of criticism agains Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
Vance laid the opioid crisis, Mexican cartels and what he referred to as the presence of fentanyl in marijuana directly at Harris’s feet.
Drug Cartels Operating In Our Communities’
“So, the border policies that we have at the southern border, they make our communities less safe even as far north as Wisconsin. It means Mexican drug cartels operating in our communities. It means people dying of fentanyl,” Vance told the police union members, reported Fox28.
“I talked to another police officer who talked about, we have fentanyl not just in heroin and opioids and even prescription pills, or I guess non-prescription pills that are sold on the street. We’ve got fentanyl in our marijuana bags that our teenagers are using.”
Fact Check
The Partnership to End Addiction says there is no solid evidence that marijuana is being laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid primarily manufactured in Mexico and smuggled into the U.S.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has confirmed that drug dealers have been mixing fentanyl with other drugs, though the DEA has not issued any alerts or warnings about fentanyl being found in marijuana. With some 55 million people in the U.S. using cannabis, we would likely see overdose rates far higher than they are today if fentanyl was in the marijuana supply. Synthetic opioids like fentanyl contributed to nearly 70% of the estimated 107,543 overdose deaths that occurred in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).