Did President Joe Biden laugh about "a poor mother who lost two kids to fentanyl"? No, he did not. But the context of his controversial remarks reveals bipartisan complicity in the prohibitionist policies that lead to senseless deaths like these.
On Tuesday, the Republican-controlled House Committee on Homeland Security held a hearing that was framed as an indictment of the Biden administration's border policies. One of the witnesses was Rebecca Kiessling, a Rochester Hills, Michigan, lawyer whose sons Caleb, 20, and Kyler, 18, died in July 2020 after swallowing counterfeit Percocet pills that contained fentanyl. Although that hazard was created by the war on drugs, Kiessling blames the government for failing to wage that war aggressively enough.
