Trump Pretends To Care About The Opioid Epidemic Online & Regrets It In 8 Seconds Flat

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While U.S. President Donald Trump continues to occupy himself with going after his political opponents, like former CIA Director John Brennan, Americans are suffering. Monday morning, at the tail end of a lengthy series of angry public pronouncements, Trump tweeted support for a bill meant to help those suffering Americans.

He wrote:

‘It is outrageous that Poisonous Synthetic Heroin Fentanyl comes pouring into the U.S. Postal System from China. We can, and must, END THIS NOW! The Senate should pass the STOP ACT – and firmly STOP this poison from killing our children and destroying our country. No more delay!’

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As Trump’s above quoted tweet indicates, the STOP Act is meant to address the opioid epidemic in the United States. In 2017 alone, some 70,000 Americans are believed to have lost their lives to drug overdoses, the majority of which involved opioids. That number is higher than the number of Americans ever recorded to have been killed in a single year from HIV, guns, or car crashes. More than 60 percent of those opioid deaths involved synthetic substances like fentanyl, which is often mailed into the U.S.

There are already legal demands in place for private mail carriers to ensure that they don’t transport such materials, but there are no such requirements in place for the United States Postal Service. They’re permitted to “opt-in” to the currently in-place regulations but have never chosen to do so. The STOP — or Synthetics Trafficking and Overdose Prevention — Act aims to change that. If passed, every piece of mail sent into the United States from another country must be accompanied by “package level detail information.”

The measure, unlike its previous incarnations, has attracted broad bipartisan support. Trump is jumping on a bandwagon here in tweeting his support for it. After attracting the support of literally hundreds of co-sponsors from both major political parties, the measure passed the U.S. House in mid-June and is now up for consideration in the U.S. Senate, where Ohio’s Rob Portman continues to push it.

Earlier this month, in a speech delivered on the Senate floor, he commented:

‘It’s long past time for the Senate to pass this bill so it can become law and begin making a difference.’

The measure stands in stark contrast to the president’s own record on the opioid crisis.

Earlier this year, he delivered the impractical assertion that the U.S. take to executing drug dealers. That plan would put disadvantaged and suffering individuals across the country in jeopardy, suddenly turning the government into an execution squad instead of a task force dedicated to finding proactive solutions. The move mirrors the actions of Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte, who has himself carried on with a war on drugs defined by extrajudicial executions — and who has enjoyed Trump’s praise in the past.

Beyond that, he has also morphed the drug problem into an issue with Mexico as a whole, using it as supposed justification for his racist proposal for a wall along the entire U.S. border with the country.

Check out Twitter’s response below.

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Featured Image via YouTube screenshot