Cspan is your unfiltered view of government. We are funded by these Television Companies and more, including cox. It is extremely rare. But friends dont have to be. This is joe. When youre connected, youre not alone. Cox, support cspan as a public service, along th these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. Now a National Security and Health Policy discuss the possible use of the military to combat the illegal flow of fentanyl across the southern border. Topics include legislation in congress that would authorize military boards to target the Mexican Cartel and the consequences of intervention in mexico. Hosted by the cato institute, this runs about an hour and 20 minutes. And 20 minutes. Good afternoon everyone. My name is justin logan, i am the director of defense and Foreign Policy studies at cato. It is my pleasure to welcome you, in this form, an uncommonly formal august afternoon in washington, to our forum on proposals for using u. S. Military at the border to counter fentanyl. You will hear a lot of reasons this afternoon why proposals for using the u. S. Military in and around mexico to counter fentanyl is a bad idea. It is important to state at the outset that there is an underlying crisis happening in the u. S. Overdose deaths and precise data are hard to come by. As we can tell, somewhere on the order of 60 and 80,000 americans per year, last year in 2022, are dying of fentanyl related overdoses. Provisional data from the cdc suggested there were more than 70,000 fentanyl Overdose Deaths in the country last year. So, there is a real underlying crisis happening in the u. S. , that helps to explain why politicians have begun to latch onto the problem. June, nbc news poll, they illustrated the public is quite anxious about this problem. Respondents were asked whether a president ial candidate who supported deploying the u. S. Military to the Mexican Border to stop Illegal Drugs from entering the country would make someone more or less likely to vote for that candidate. Speaking of the public, it made people it made 55 of people more likely to vote for such a candidate. Only 29 of people less likely to vote for such a candidate. Speaking about republicans, 86 of people were more likely to vote for a candidate who favored deploying u. S. Military to the border, to counter drugs. Only 6 of republicans were more likely to oppose a candidate. You have a real underlying crisis happening in the u. S. You have politicians groping around at solutions. Just because something is marketed as a real solution to a real problem, does not mean it is a real solution, to a real problem. I think that is the right way to set up the discussion we are about to have this afternoon. I am very pleased to have what i think is a panel of diverse experts that get at this problem from different angles. Uncommonly, i think they will flow from your left, to your right. Brian is the Senior Advisor for the u. S. Program at the International Crisis group, and a nonresident senior fellow at the rightcenter of law and security at nyu law school. He served as attorney advisor the u. S. State Departments Office of the legal advisor. His work on u. S. Foreign policy appeared in forte affairs, policy foreign affair policies, just security. Hes going to comment on some of the legal aspects of the proposals, particularly in congress for using the military and cartels. Lupe, is a school at teacher at george mason diversity, her Research Includes organized crime and u. S. mexico relations. She is the author of criminal corporation, energy and civil war in mexico. She is working on a book project about human trafficking. She has a ba in economics, her na in Political Science from the new school for social research. Finally, we will hear from jeff singer, my colleague, where he is a senior fellow of health policies. He is the founder of surgical clinics in phoenix, arizona. He is a physician by trade. He has practiced general surgery for more than 40 years. In march, he testified before the House Committee on crime and surveillance and the role that prohibition has paid played in the fentanyl crisis. He earned a ba at brooklyn college. I think it is probably best to start off by asking brian to talk about we have heard from republican president ial candidates, that we will be tough and use the military against the cartels, but not a lot of details and those proposals. We have at least three pieces of legislation wending their way through capitol hill that involve, or at least adjacent to use of the military, for these cartels, can you talk a bit about what, if any powers with those grant the government for using the military, and what the implications of these legislations would have . Thanks for having me here. It is a pleasure to be here. Let me preface my remarks by noting that because the illegal guardrails from the unilateral use of force by the president are weak, it is not necessary that Congress Enacts any additional legislation for the president to be able to wield the military against cartels in mexico. Bear in mind. Youre selecting both the scale of the fentanyl crisis and also its political assailants, it is 145 pieces of legislation being introduced in this congress that refer to fentanyl. They cover topics of strengthening criminal penalties to increased border control, to Harm Reduction, i will focus on measures that have been introduced, that frame the war on drugs on an act as an actual war and propose either use of military force or militarized approaches to capturing fentanyl. The most extreme of these is the amf cartel introduced by dan crenshaw, representative of florida. This is a real deal war authorization cut and pasted from the 2001 authorization use of military force. This measure reproduces many of the pathologies of that war on terror authorization. It would give the president the authority to use appropriate force against a list of named Drug Trafficking organizations in mexico. Also, to add additional groups against whom the president can use force. Because this authorization is so broad, the president would have the authority to launch new wars against organizations in mexico potentially even mexico state itself. There is also, right out of the House Affairs committee, the project precursor act, which would direct the secretary of state fentanyl as a chemical weapon to add fentanyl as a chemical weapon. Lindsey graham has introduced a measure that would designate Drug Trafficking organizations as foreign terrorist organizations. Theres also measures introduced that would direct the homeland of security to designate fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. Earlier this year biden received a letter from 18 states attorney generals making similar requests that fentanyl be labeled as a weapon of mass destruction. The prospect for any of these measures becoming law, being enacted is pretty dim. Its not it will have to pass in congress. The administration shows no interest in signing this into law. The danger in the framing and measures that cast the war on drugs and cast the use of military force as appropriate policy tools is likely on the campaign trails. Doing drone strikes, blockades, shooting suspected drug traffickers. They have normalized the ideas that using military force is an appropriate policy response to the crisis. They make it more likely that a future president will actually use that authority. The president does not need Additional Authority given the week guardrails he has. They will normalize the notion that this is the future of the white house to rely upon. I will do my best to keep this from becoming the representative crenshaw show. Theres a lot that he has done with this policy. He has done again an authorization for the use of military force. It has very clear parallels to the 2001 authorization of the use of military force. I am going to read you a quote. He has done this back and forth, what i would call hiding the ball on what the legislation would do. He said aghast, he said no one is talking about an invasion or war with mexico, rather the bill provides, as he puts it the minimum authority needed to operate with the mexican military. This is what i want to ask you about, your analysis of, as we have done with other allies battling internal insurgencies. There seems to be this underlying conceit between the way we frame this problem. Is it whether you want to frame it as mexico is engaged in a counterinsurgency war, or lowgrade civil war . What is vexing us is that they dont want our help, or help in the right way, or they dont want enough health help . What are we to make of this . First of all do you buy that analysis underpinning what is going on here. If so, what are we to make of this . It is disingenuous. You dont need a statute drafted in this fashion to provide the authority he is referring to. That depends what he has in mind. He is vague. In terms, if he wants to share intelligence with the mexican state to combat trafficking, the president would not need additional authorities to engage in intelligence sharing. Which i am sure is taking place right now. This is an attempt to walk back the clear implications, to distance themselves from the clear text of the statute. It reminds me of some of the measures and language from members of congress, that voted for the iraq war authorization. After it was used, they tried to distance themselves from their votes, for the authorization, saying, we did not intend it to be used go to war, despite the fact that it offered authority. Anytime you see members of Congress Vote for war operations, take it seriously. We got more specificity about representative crenshaws bill. He had a post, i dont know where he was speaking, on instagram recently, where he talked about having gone to high school in the columbia. He visited columbia recently and talked about how much it is a different place than it was when he was in high school. According to the representative, columbia is the model. The reason columbia changed over 20 years is because of what American Partnership meant for them, our American Military working handinhand with them, or police, our Law Enforcement, very close relationships. We heard a lot about insurgencies. I was aghast at this. The american track record over the past 20 years is not what people should want to replicate, particularly on our border. In one sense, it was a relief that we did not want to replay the iraq and afghanistan experience in northern mexico. At the same time, vexing that the columbia experienced is what we are supposed to be replicating in mexico. You have done work in trafficking. Your convert wellversed in columbia in the 1990s. Is columbia good and along for what we analog of what were trying to achieve with the cartels . It is a very bad analogy. First of all, the name of the bill, the war on cartels. Cartel as a concept is its own concept to use. I understand that this concept is used in the media. Everybody uses that to refer to criminal groups in mexico. In columbia, too, the idea of the cartels, the colombian conflict. First of all, were not talking about organizations. We are not talking about organizations in columbia that come together, that sit together to form and decide the amounts of drugs they are going to produce and transport in order to operate the monopoly. The concept is wrong. What about columbia . I dont understand if representative crenshaw remembers, it is surprising he lived there, he does not remember how much destruction this partnership, that was a learning process, caused for colombian citizens. Not only that, what are we fighting . If a war against drugs, is a war on fentanyl, is a war that is going to leave this country free of drugs, or will it diminish the level of drug consumption . What happened in columbia as a failed war. The objective was to reduce the levels of consumption of cocaine. If that is what we want if that is the final aim of this collaboration. The narcotics corporation between the United States and the Different Countries of latin america, have failed. More drugs are coming to the u. S. Than at any other time in history. The opioid epidemic, now the fentanyl crisis, after 1 trillion being spent on the war on drugs. Columbia is an example of the destruction that militarization of the fight, or the militarization of antinarcotics policies. What is happening in mexico with the initiative . One mexico started to militarize under the umbrella of the initiative, the agreement of the even though the current president of mexico does not talk about a war on drugs. I want to bring this up because we have a slide here. We started talking about columbia because we were talking about cocaine and we talked about mexico because we were talking about fentanyl. This is a graph that was released and these are the prices and Different Levels of quantity of adp program of cocaine. A pure gram of cocaine. As you can see here, if we are interested in columbia because of cocaine or mexico because of fentanyl, what you would want is to reduce the amount of them coming into the United States, which as my economics fetzer is reminding me, should have the effect of driving the price up. But the price of cocaine went down dramatically. And during the hot and heavy years in columbia, the prices were relatively flat. If the reason we are interested in the cartels is because of paraphernalia fentanyl, there is a lot of reason to be optimistic about mimicking the columbia experience in mexico. I wanted to ask a little bit about the politics of this issue inside mexico because it is to my mind a little bit of a hot issue. People get fairly agitated about it. The mexican president and not like the idea of an authorization for the use of military force in the congress. This was the least surprising thing to happen in my recent memory. There is a lot of consternation that this would be a hot topic inside mexico. Can you talk a little bit about both at the elite level and the mass level how this issue would be likely to plan mexican politics. In my superficial understanding of mexican politics i cannot think of a politically relevant force that would say we see this as a swell idea. Maybe you can tell us different see differently. Mexico today is very divided. Beyond that, the opposition might be somewhat happy with that idea, but lets try to discuss this better. Absolutely for any mexican citizen, just the idea of military involvement in mexico is pretty traumatic because of the traumatic experience [indiscernible] but not only that, there is a sense of course of sovereignty, but what has happened, the experience, but also the brutality that this can create because of the brutality that has been created within mexico because of the involvement of the military. There is a segment of the population by supports mexican military signed the ground but there is a lot of criticism. How many people have disappeared or died because of confrontations between the cartels and the mexican military . The concern also is about intervention. It is about the United States intervening in our country and causing massive deaths. What is a Mexican Cartel . Not all of these cartels are dedicated to the drug trade. The United States does not necessarily have to go after all criminal groups. Some of them specialize in criminal call activities. What are you going to do . What are you going to go after . Are you going to go after any criminal group, are you going to bomb complete communities of people where these activities are . It will be mass destruction because of the involvement of an army that does not understand the dynamics of what is happening in this country. Some part of the opposition were criticizing the lack of results with regards to these criminal groups. But not all of these groups are connected to Drug Trafficking of fentanyl. Some of these groups have tram transformed themselves because of the war on drugs or the military strategy are. They adapt. They specialize in different criminal activities so it is not a war on cartels. It is a war on the mexican people. So there is an ambivalence that wherever you look it can also get worse. Jeff, i wanted to get back to fentanyl because the discussion in congress has drifted from a bunch of people overdosing. As i said at the opening, some youthful 70,000 or so people die in of overdoses. We should all be open to solutions to that problem. Why are 70,000 people a year die from fentanyl . Is there something unique about fentanyl . Is it all drug prohibition and things that we know about how drug prohibition works . It is important not to look at this in a vacuum. Fentanyl is a legal pharmaceutical drug that has been around for over 50 years. If anyone had any sort of surgery, there is a good chance they were given intravenous fentanyl. If they are chronic pain patients, they were likely given fentanyl and a skin patch. It is a legal drug, but it can be synthesized by amateur chemists in a lab. We are talking about fentanyl as if it is traveling across the border and searching for prey to attack. But it is just the response to the market and people wanting to purchase drugs on the black market. It is the latest example of the iron, which is the harder the enforcement, the harder the drug. During alcohol prohibition, they were not smuggling in beer and wine. There were smuggling in whiskey. When people tailgate at a football game, that is a real time example of the iron law for prohibition. They are not allowed to bring alcohol in the stadium. There smuggling the hard stuff. It comes to the current war on drugs, in the early part of the century the drug of choice for nonmedical users was prescription pain pills. As efforts to perfect to clamp down on the amount available in the black market, drug users moved to heroin which became readily available. Around 2012, those were marketing heroin figured out if you add a little bit of fentanyl , it increases potency so you can smuggle it in smaller sizes. Gradually that became more of a