New York’s — and America’s — No. 1 public health crisis has officially gotten worse: 60% of all fake prescription drug pills seized in the US in 2022 contained fentanyl. That’s up from 40% in 2021. 

Per federal data, the drug is involved in almost two-thirds of the roughly 102,000 annual overdose deaths nationwide. In the city, it’s over 80% of more than 2,800 OD fatalities for the latest 12 months on record, up 125% since 2016. The national increase of 75% since 2016 has helped drive American life expectancy down to its lowest level in 25 years. 

This is a catastrophe, and the forces driving it seem to be strengthening. 

Manufactured by Mexican cartels and sent across our porous southern border, fentanyl can kill adults in tiny amounts, even as an additive to “boost” some other drug. (It’s far cheaper and easier to produce at scale than heroin or cocaine.)

And city Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan warns the drug is now “integrated” into our drug supply. Which means the deaths are set to keep climbing from here.

Confronted with these numbers, New York’s progressives throw up their hands and spout platitudes about “harm reduction” and how safe-injection sites and testing kits are the only possible remedies. 

Bull. The first and most important move is securing the southern border. In 2022, the Drug Enforcement Administration nabbed more than 379 million lethal doses of the drug (including more than 50 million of those fake prescription pills) at the border. Yet the Biden team just shrugs.

On the New York City front, a return to the kind of policing Mayor Eric Adams advocates — focused on fighting recidivism and restoring public order — is also essential. Not caving to the interests of dealers by enabling addicts. Letting people slowly kill themselves is not compassion.

This, in the words of a city medical examiner, is a health crisis. And it’s time the nation started acting like it.