Fentanyl now claims the lives of more than 75,000 Americans a year. The CDC just released numbers for 2022, and there was a 4% increase over 2021. In fact, more adults between 18 and 45 are killed by fentanyl than any other single cause. Members of Congress are finally poised to do something about it.

Senators Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Tim Kaine (D-VA), along with Representatives Stephanie Bice (R-OK) and Salud Carbajal (D-CA), are about to introduce the Disrupt Fentanyl Trafficking Act, which will empower the Pentagon to play a significant role in stopping the flow of illicit drugs across the southern border. The vast majority of fentanyl in America comes from Mexico, where it is made with Chinese ingredients and then trafficked here by the drug cartels.

The legislators believe that a coordinated strategy between the American and Mexican militaries to target the cartels will put a big dent into the flow of drugs.

“The amount of lives lost in Iowa and across the country due to this deadly drug has far surpassed the federal government’s response, and we must scale immediately to combat this national security threat,” Ernst said. “This bipartisan work will engage Mexico as an active partner to counter fentanyl trafficking and put the Pentagon’s tools to use to save American lives.”

Kaine added: “If we want to prevent future tragedies, the United States must work with Mexico to counter fentanyl trafficking across our southern border. This bipartisan, commonsense bill would help us create the strongest strategy for how to do that.”

Will it?

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador blames America for the problem, and in some ways he has a point. Yet AMLO is a communist who’s backed by those cartels, and he effectively runs a narco-terrorist state.

In fact, he rejected any attempt to lay blame on Mexico, and he promised to interfere in American elections in retaliation.

Stateside, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted earlier this year that Team Biden is already doing a marvelous job. “Because of the work that this president has done,” she argued, “because of what we’ve done specifically on fentanyl at the border, it’s at historic lows.” That is patently false.

The number of Americans who died of fentanyl in 2022 was 26 times higher than 10 years earlier. The border was, as we all know, wide open.

DEA Administrator Anne Milgram last year called fentanyl “the greatest threat to Americans today.” And here we thought it was “white supremacy.”

In any case, is the Biden administration suddenly going to close the border because Ernst and Kaine wrote a fentanyl bill?

The good news is that this latest legislation isn’t the only effort in Congress this year. Republican Senators Roger Marshall and Rick Scott reintroduced the Drug Cartel Terrorist Designation Act in March. Congressmen Dan Crenshaw and Mike Waltz introduced a bill to establish an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against the Mexican cartels. The more Congress pushes these solutions, the more pressure the Biden administration will feel.

We likely need every tool in the box. Ultimately, however, the only way to truly stop the scourge of fentanyl in America is to close the border. And it may be that the only way to do that is to reinstall a Republican administration willing to do the necessary hard work of real law enforcement.

(Updated with CDC numbers released after publishing Wednesday.)