A poll conducted by the Daily Mail and the TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics (TIPP) reveals that voters by wide margins are in favor of deploying the United States military to end Mexican drug cartels' production — and subsequent smuggling into the U.S. — of deadly drugs.
On Tuesday, the Daily Mail reported that 61% of the poll's nearly 1,400 respondents want U.S. forces to tackle cartel paramilitaries head-on — a move that is also being championed by GOP presidential candidates South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former President Donald Trump.
The poll read as "Agree or Disagree: The U.S. Military should be deployed to fight the Mexican cartels and stop them from smuggling fentanyl and other deadly drugs into the United States."
Of the 61% of respondents who were in favor of deploying U.S. troops, 31% voted "Strongly agree" while 30% responded with "Agree somewhat." Those who replied with "Disagree somewhat" (16%) or "Disagree strongly" (13%) made up for 29% of the votes. Only 11% voted "Not sure."
According to the poll, 70% of Republican respondents wanted to see cartel drug labs attacked, while 58% of Democrats and 55% of independents agreed.
The Daily Mail/TIPP poll has a margin of error of ±2.7 percentage points.
The results appear to be a strong indicator of increasing weariness over the U.S.-Mexico border crisis and its ongoing security concerns, particularly with regard to intercepting drug flows into the U.S. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that the U.S. had nearly 110,000 drug overdose deaths in 2022, with 75,000 of those fatalities attributed to synthetic opioids like fentanyl.
Trump and Scott are among several Republicans who want to see U.S. troops wipe out drug labs and the cartels running them in Mexico, where fentanyl is produced using precursor chemicals that are imported from China.
According to the Daily Mail's report, plans also involve branding the Sinaloa, Jalisco New Generation, and other cartels as terrorist organizations, and imposing strong sanctions that would prohibit their leaders from moving money or traveling internationally.
Last week, Trump stated in an Agenda 47 policy video posted on Rumble that, "When I'm president we will not rest until we have ended the drug addiction crisis in America." In the video, he also blamed President Joe Biden for destroying any progress the Trump administration had made — including achieving the first reduction in overdose deaths in more than 30 years — and for "the surrender of our southern border" to the cartels.
Last month, prior to the end of Title 42 enforcement at the border, Scott told Newsmax's "Rob Schmitt Tonight" that "Americans are outraged by the abdication of responsibility by President Biden. … I can't think of any better way [to keep America safe] than to close our southern border."
Back in March, Mexico's president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said that his country neither produces nor consumes fentanyl, regardless of any evidence that proves otherwise, and he positioned the synthetic opioid epidemic as an American social problem.
Origins of the fentanyl epidemic can be traced back more than 20 years, following an aggressive overprescribing of oxycodone in the U.S. After U.S. authorities cracked down on prescriptions, Mexico's Sinaloa cartel moved to supplying users with heroin and, eventually, the far more potent, inexpensive to manufacture synthetic opioid, fentanyl.
As Trump said in last week's campaign video, "Fentanyl and other ultra-deadly poisons are pouring into our country unchecked — stealing more than 100,000 American lives every single year."
"We are going to need God's help to help steer our nation out of this crisis," he said.
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