ROGER SIMON: Even More Than the Economy, 2022 Is the Fentanyl Election.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who has been sounding the alarm on fentanyl for some time, reminds us of just how bad it is in an op-ed for The Washington Times:

“Fentanyl is an especially dangerous drug. Just two milligrams—the equivalent of a few grains of sand—can kill an adult male. The Mexican cartels have built super labs to mass produce this extremely deadly drug. Last year alone, authorities seized around 2.5 billion deadly doses of fentanyl at our border. Fentanyl overdoses are now the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45.

“Each drug death and severe case of addiction is like a bomb going off in a community. Families are shattered, children are orphaned, promising young Americans are psychologically destroyed, and neighborhoods physically deteriorate. It’s little surprise that some parts of this country look and feel like warzones.”

The Biden administration allowed this horrendous crime—we can easily call it mass murder since more of us are dying annually from fentanyl than did American troops in the Vietnam War—via the open border. It’s time for all of us to channel Emile Zola and say “J’Accuse…!” No more of this crime against our nation’s citizens.

We can do so at the ballot box in November, obviously, but also this may well be the best issue with which to wake up those who hide behind the terms “liberal” and ”progressive” and think of themselves as “good people.”

How can you be “good” and countenance this?

It’s incumbent on all of us to publicize this expanding catastrophe as widely as we can, not just through articles and postings on social media, but even more potently one-on-one where people are often more prone to listen.

This is not just an epidemic in red America. It’s everywhere and growing.

Is it a conspiracy of communist China? You decide. But whatever it is, those pills, dressed up and repackaged as they are by the cartels in pretty, inviting colors, are killing our children as nothing has in the past.

COVID-19 is a piffle by comparison. Fentanyl is destroying our younger population, therefore our future. As Cotton noted, it is the leading cause of death between those 18 and 45.

Related: Texas sheriff: Fentanyl is a WMD — and Biden’s border crisis is the delivery method.