Back on December 15, the organization Families Against Fentanyl exposed how Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data showed deadly drug overdoses from fentanyl have become the leading cause of death among people between the ages of 18 and 45 and not the coronavirus. While still taking Covid seriously, one could have expected the major broadcast networks to acknowledge it.
Since then, however, the flagship morning and evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC have completely ignored it.
FoxNews.com’s Audrey Conklin had more in a December 16 piece about the death toll and Fentanyl itself, which is an “opioid that can be deadly even in very small amounts, and other drugs, including heroin, meth and marijuana, can be laced with the dangerous drug”:
Fentanyl overdoses have surged to the leading cause of death for adults between the ages of 18 and 45, according to an analysis of U.S. government data.
Between 2020 and 2021, nearly 79,000 people between 18 and 45 years old — 37,208 in 2020 and 41,587 in 2021 — died of fentanyl overdoses, the data analysis from opioid awareness organization Families Against Fentanyl shows.
(….)
Comparatively, between Jan. 1, 2020, and Dec. 15, 2021, there were more than 53,000 COVID-19 deaths among those between the ages of 18 and 49, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In addition to having to admit that something is deadlier and worth worrying more about than Covid, one reason for the omission could be the fact that, as FNC’s Carley Shimkus repeatedly noted throughout the end of December, fentanyl has infiltrated the U.S. via the Mexico border after having been made in China.
Therefore, covering this tragedy would require the liberal media to at least tread toward promoting border security and standing up to communist China. Or maybe because Politifact cartoonishly said this sad reality was only half-true.
As opposed to the silence from ABC, CBS, and NBC, the Fox News Channel (FNC) has covered it over a dozen times.
For example, FNC’s Fox & Friends weekend co-host Will Cain discussed it on the December 17 Fox News Prime Time and December 18 Fox & Friends Saturday (click “expand”):
CAIN: But it’s not just mental health and suicides that are up. Overdoses are sky rocketing as well. In fact, take a guess at what the number one cause of death is among U.S. adults ages 18 to 45. I’ll tell you: It's not Covid-19. It's fentanyl overdoses. Data shows that fentanyl deaths doubled from 32,754 deaths to 64,178 deaths over the last two years. All these numbers, all of this information – it is solid proof of a real health crisis unfolding and nothing is being done about it. In fact, Dr. Fauci and Joe Biden seem totally unconcerned.
(….)
CAIN: And I’ll just leave this quickly, Pete, maybe we can talk about it throughout the morning. I was hosting PrimeTime this week and one of the stories we focused on last night was the leading cause -- the leading cause of death, number one in the United States of America for people age 18 to 45, it's not Covid.
PETE HEGSETH: Nope.
CAIN: It's fentanyl overdose. It is fentanyl overdose, flooding over that border, poisoning – our people are being poisoned with an illicit drug flowing over our southern border. If that's not a crisis, if that’s not the preeminent crisis I don't know how you define crisis.
HEGSETH: Such a great point and you did a phenomenal job – I saw that last night – you did a great job all week on PrimeTime. So, here we are –
CAIN: Thank you.
HEGSETH: -- snuffing out a milder form of a virus that we are living with for two years while we ramp up the shear open borders down south.
Skipping ahead to the December 21 and 30 episodes of Fox & Friends First, The Hill’s Joe Concha offered a question for reporters to ask President Biden while FNC’s Kevin Corke put a fine point on the importance of acknowledging both Covid and fentanyl deaths (click “expand”):
CONCHA [on 12/21/21]: More than two million people crossed into the U.S. illegally this year, record amounts of fentanyl have also come across. Fentanyl overdoses, sir, are the leading cause of death for those 18 to 45 years old in this country yet you never talk about fixing the border or addressing the fentanyl crisis. Why is that?
(….)
CORKE [on 12/30/21]: The deaths just, again, staggering when you look at the number of people dying from drug overdose deaths. We talk a lot about covid for obvious reasons, but I think people also need to keep in mind that there’s a massive number of Americans who are dying from drug overdose deaths.
The closest any of the broadcast networks came was a December 19 interview on CBS’s Face the Nation in which moderator Margaret Brennan spoke broadly to the issue of fentanyl coming into the country with Drug Enforcement Agency head (and former CNN analyst) Anne Milgram.
And on December 30’s GMA3, the ABC show reported that “for the first time, more Americans died from overdoses than car crashes and gun fatalities combined during this pandemic” before a piece touting legal injection sites with some cities going further in dispersing free needles and medical supplies for addicts. Of course, both are done without strings attached or genuine attempts to have them stop.
