Drug Crisis That Kills 75,000 Americans Annually Should Be Central to Election, Arizona Sheriff Says

It’s not the people flooding across the southern border affecting Arizonans, but rather what some of the illegal immigrants carry with them.

Illegal aliens don’t stay in his state, according to Pinal County, Arizona Sheriff Mark Lamb. Instead, they travel to “California, Massachusetts, New York, Chicago, Iowa, Alabama,” the sheriff rattles off. “But what we are feeling is, just like every state and every American family, we're feeling the effects of fentanyl,” he said.

An estimated 74,702 people died from fentanyl poisoning in America in 2023, a slight decline from the 76,226 fentanyl-related deaths in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Lamb argues that the fentanyl crisis should be discussed more in the news and during the 2024 presidential election but is not because “to talk about it would mean you'd have to accept responsibility to it, and to accept the responsibility would cost you an election.”

The Harris campaign did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.

The sheriff joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss what to expect on election night in Arizona, one of seven swing states, and the role the border crisis is playing the way Americans are voting this election.