Elected leaders must confront the deadly crises of fentanyl overdose and gun violence | Opinion

This year, we should have celebrated my nephew’s 21st birthday. Instead, we marked the first anniversary of the day we lost him.

Last year, my family joined the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have grieved the unexpected death of a loved one to fentanyl. My nephew, Eli Weinstock, died after ingesting kratom, a legal herbal supplement, that was laced with fentanyl.

In April 2021, just weeks after we lost Eli, the United States reached a devastating milestone: more than 100,000 overdose deaths in 12 months. And 64% of those deaths, including Eli’s, were caused by one substance: fentanyl. Unbeknownst to him, the kratom he ingested that night was laced with a lethal dose of it.

Again and again, all over the country, we read the same tragic headlines of young people suddenly facing life-threatening overdoses from a substance they were not aware they were taking. Fentanyl is mixed into illicit drugs, like cocaine and MDMA. It is mixed into legal substances, like kratom. And it is mixed into counterfeit prescription pills, pressed to look like Xanax, Adderall, or Vicodin — pills that kids mistakenly believe are real, legal and safe.

As fentanyl deaths mount, so, too, do gun deaths.

Again and again, from Texas to Pennsylvania, from Illinois to Florida, we read the same tragic headlines of Americans suddenly gunned down while studying in classrooms, shopping in grocery stores, celebrating at parades and concerts, and worshiping at synagogue and church. Gun violence is everywhere — making bloodbaths of places that kids and adults alike mistakenly believe are safe. This year, we marked the fourth anniversary of the day we lost 17 members of the South Florida community at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School — the day Parkland lost children, friends and family to preventable gun violence.

As of five years ago, nearly half of us knew someone who had been shot, and those numbers have only continued to climb. By now, more than half of us also know someone who lost their life to a drug overdose.

In Eli’s story and in thousands of others across the nation, they did not overdose by taking too much of a substance. They overdosed on a substance they never intended to take. Whether they choose to take legal substances or illicit recreational drugs, they do not expect to die from fentanyl. Likewise, we assume our communities are safe, we do not think our daily activities put us in harm’s way, until we suddenly lose neighbors to gun violence.

These two ongoing tragedies speak to one enduring problem: the failure to act boldly. There are tools we can use to stem the tidal wave of broken hearts. Tools that can detect the presence of fentanyl in a substance, like fentanyl test strips, are readily available. And policies that will keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people and prevent mass shootings, like universal background checks and assault-weapon bans, are teed up in Congress.

The solutions seem obvious. But public policy has lagged painfully behind the pace of devastation in our communities.

Fentanyl test strips remain illegal in Florida. Outdated policies that characterize tools used to test the composition of a drug as “drug paraphernalia” cost American lives. And the only national gun-violence prevention bill that has made it to the president’s desk stops short of mandating universal background checks, even as states across the country, including ours, are trying to loosen gun laws further.

Congress and the states have an obligation to act now to prevent future tragedies.

In the time it has taken you to read this op-ed, another American died of an overdose. Another American was shot. Every single member of Congress has lost constituents to these crises — many of us have lost family. We cannot wait until it is personal to all of us. It is time for us to pass the many bipartisan bills introduced this Congress that will protect the health and well-being of the American people.

In state legislatures, it is time to adapt drug laws to support, rather than stigmatize, Americans in need and time to limit, not broaden, access to weapons of war. We need to rise above polarization, cheap shots and partisan fights to powerfully face the harsh realities of the fentanyl and gun-violence crises, then boldly act on both to save lives.

U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch has represented Florida’s 22nd Congressional District since 2010.

This story was originally published September 12, 2022 at 2:36 PM.