Trump, His Wall and Our Drugs

The Donald ... He insists, through tweets and remarks, that the cost of his wall will fall on us. His enormous, beautiful border wall. "Mexico will pay," he confirms, "one way or another." It could be through a reimbursement, we could be squeezed until we pay, it could be soon, it could take years, but either way, we're paying.

And the wall is just so badly needed, he says. The United States, the land of the free, home of the brave, must protect itself with a physical barrier from the plague that is Mexico.

"Mexico has a tremendous crime problem — tremendous. One of the number two or three in the world," claims the smug Agent Orange. His source? Probably some offhand comment on Fox News about an idiotic report by some Brits who have never set foot in Mexico. But what does it matter? It's not like the truth is important. It's not as though these claims need to be based on any facts.

So, we're flooding the U.S. with criminals — dark-skinned ones, to make it worse.

And not just criminals, but drugs. Lots of drugs: "Tremendous drugs are pouring into the United States at levels that nobody has ever seen before."

Sure, Trump's right: Nobody has ever seen levels like this. Except, of course, every preceding administration since the end of the 70s. In the glorious era of Pablo Escobar and Colombian narcotics, the U.S. imported 600 tons of cocaine, a volume four or five times greater than the current levels. Between 2011 and 2015, marijuana seizures at the U.S.-Mexico border fell 40 percent, according to the gringos’ official statistics.

But Donald meant to say heroin, not drugs in general. There's no use in asking him to be precise.

Heroin. That's the issue. That's what the evil Mexicans are using to lead the innocent American population down the wrong road.

And how can such a diabolical substance be stopped? With a wall, of course. The wall “will stop much of the drugs pouring into this country and poisoning our youth."

Because, clearly, the heroin comes through those stretches of the border where the enormous, beautiful wall will be built. Trump knows that intuitively. He knows because he just knows. It's useless to try explaining that nine out of every 10 kilos of seized heroin are found at ports of entry, not in the desert, not on the river, not out in the middle of nowhere.

And let's not waste time talking about relative volume. Why bother telling him that, according to official U.S. statistics, for some years now, heroin consumption in their country measures between 25 and 45 tons per year, which could fit into between 1,000 and 1,800 suitcases, an amount that even when multiplied by three, five, 10 or 100, could be easily transported a thousand different ways through the legal transit of people and goods.

But no, the heroin comes from Mexico, it passes through the empty border desert, and that is that. But who is it that needs those legal painkillers so urgently, opioid-based or not, prescribed by thousands of doctors and sold in thousands of pharmacies? Who is it that craves all the OxyContin, Vicodin and Percocet? Who's consuming those drugs that have for the past two years caused 50 percent more overdose deaths than heroin? Who's got something coming to them that a wall can't fix?

Nope, the man with the peculiar head of hair knows what he knows and he knows it because he knows it. The problem is the border; the problem is Mexico. And so there must be an enormous, impassable wall, paid somehow at some time by the Mexicans.

What Trump promises to do, Trump will do.

Sure, as soon as he handles that little problem in Houston.