The Daily Signal - Drug Crisis That Kills 75,000 Americans Annually Should Be Central to Election, Arizona Sheriff Says

Episode Date: November 2, 2024

It’s not the people flooding across the southern border affecting Arizonans, but rather what some of the illegal immigrants carry with them.    Illegal aliens don’t stay in his state, according to Pinal County, Arizona Sheriff Mark Lamb. Instead, they travel to “California, Massachusetts, New York, Chicago, Iowa, Alabama,” the sheriff rattles off. “But what we are feeling is, just like every state and every American family, we're feeling the effects of fentanyl,” he said.    An estimated 74,702 people died from fentanyl poisoning in America in 2023, a slight decline from the 76,226 fentanyl related deaths in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.    Lamb argues that the fentanyl crisis should be discussed more in the news and during the 2024 presidential election but is not because “to talk about it would mean you'd have to accept responsibility to it, and to accept the responsibility would cost you an election.”    The Harris campaign did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.    The sheriff joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss what to expect on election night in Arizona, one of seven swing states, and the role the border crisis is playing the way Americans are voting this election.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's Saturday, November 2nd. I'm Virginia Allen. Welcome to the Daily Signal's first official weekend interview edition. I am so excited that as we make some big changes here at the Daily Signal, switching the Daily Signal podcast weekday show to top news in 10 and bringing our interview show into our weekend only editions, we are kicking off with a bang today. I am so pleased as we are in the middle of election season. I am. I am. I'm so pleased today to be sitting down with Pinal County, Arizona Sheriff Mark Lamb. We talk about his swing state of Arizona, what to expect there on election night, and what those big issues are that are of particular concern to Arizona.

We also talk about the fact that Arizona is, of course, a border state, and border and immigration issues are top of mind for voters in this election. But an issue that Sheriff Lamb says is not talked about enough when it comes to border in immigration is the fentanyl crisis. He says the media and campaigns should be talking about this issue constantly. And yet, we haven't heard nearly as much as we should have about the federal crisis during this election, according to Mark Lamb. Well, stay tuned for my conversation. And don't forget to hit subscribe so you're never missing out on the Daily Signal's interview weekend edition episodes like this one or our weekday, top news in 10.

Live from Indiana syndicated nationally from the Daily Signal, it's the Tony Kinnettcast. Man, you've got me hook, light and seeker. Now I want to tune into your program. Interviews from the border. Coverage from inside leftist riots. Exposing those targeting children from the guy leaving liberal journalist speechless. It's the Tony Kinnettcast. Join us live on the Daily Signals, YouTube and Extreme every weeknight at 7 p.m. Eastern or anywhere you get your podcast. Well, Mark Lamb is the sheriff for Pinell County in Arizona. He has been with us before on this podcast. And Sheriff, I am so glad to welcome you back to the show just a handful of days before the election. Thanks so much for taking the time to join the Daily Signal podcast. Well, thank you for having me on. And thank goodness we're only a few days away. I think every American has election fatigue at this point. I think so. We're just all ready for it to be done. And certainly for the folks in Arizona, a swing state, you guys have done. just been hammered with so much campaign news and campaign ads from both sides. And that's not

surprising. I mean, you look at the fact that in the last election, in 2020, razor-thin margins, you had Biden receive 49.4% of the vote and Trump received 49.1% of the vote. Is it going to be that razor-thin again in Arizona? Do you think this time? No, I don't. All into are showing this should be, you know, and all the polls are showing President Trump up by five to eight points. I expect that trend to continue. I don't think that Kamala's doing anything to help herself. I think, frankly, they're doing more to hurt themselves every time they go step on a stage somewhere. You know, now you had Joe Biden, who's not even in the race, who should be the one that's in the race, because the way they did this was just shenanigans in the first place.

But then he calls all the half of the American public garbage, much very in line with Hillary Clinton's deplorable comment years ago. And I think those things actually matter to Americans. And while we're struggling financially, the border's a mess. Our economy's not great. Debt is increasing. I don't think people want to hear that kind of nonsense. And so I don't see that it's trending well for Kamala Harris. And nor should it.

I mean, frankly, how she could even be even considered for this job after this horrible performance over the last three and a half to four years, especially as it relates to the border in the economy. You know, I was just in North Carolina, which is also a swing state, and I was chatting with voters there. The three issues that I repeatedly heard voters in North Carolina bring up are the economy, the border, and abortion. Is that largely, as you have talked to voters in your state, both during your run for Senate and just as a member of law enforcement, as a sheriff there, someone who's regularly interacting with the folks on the ground, are those the main three issues? Or are there some others that are really top of mind for Arizonans? Well, let's be realistic. The top issue is border.

But what they do is they've changed the polls recently to say immigration. When you change the vernacular from border security to immigration, then it falls to. to number two behind the economy. But I think the economy and border security are right there, one and two really close, and they probably go back and forth. The only reason abortion is even, it's because the left thinks this is their only, they think this is the silver bullet, which is sad, that the taking of the life of an unborn child is their hinge point for their campaigns

and for their platform. And the only reason abortion is as high as it is, is because they've made such an issue with it. And the reason they've done that is because they have failed in so many other categories, border, the national security, world, you know, global politics. They've failed on the border. They fell on the economy. I mean, the list goes on and on.

And so what they're doing is they're trying to hinge these campaigns and make that abortion issue creep to the top. They want voters to be single-issue voters. They're trying to deceive the voters into thinking that this is about women's health the only way you can care about women health is if you're pro-abortion. And that's just not true. I think you can absolutely be pro-life. There's nothing wrong with being pro-life.

That should be the stance that the majority of Americans have. But the left wants to make this a priority issue. And they don't ever really talk about the taking of the life of the unborn children. They talk about the women's health, but they want voters to be single-issue voters. And I would implore whether we agree or don't agree, most Americans are never going to agree 100% on this issue. What I would ask you to do is do not let the politicians in D.C. play you and make you a single issue voter because that is what they want. They don't want you to think about the other issues that are affecting not just a portion of Americans, but that are affecting

all Americans. And that's the economy, the border, national security, social security, crime in the communities. I mean, all of these things are things that we should be thinking about because those affect all Americans. And I would hope that Americans, whether you're passionate about this issue or not, please don't forget about the other issues and the Americans and how it affects us. Yeah. You mentioned crime,

and I know that that's one that's also really top of mind for many voters, especially for voters that maybe live in more urban areas and cities that have really seen an uptick in those incidents. As a sheriff in Arizona, what have you all seen over the past several years as it relates to crime? Have you seen an increase?

Well, we've been fortunate. enough in our county to reduce our crime index year after year, despite the fact that on the national level, it seems to be increasing. But that's because we hold people accountable and we uphold the rule of law, but we protect people's constitutional rights. And so what that does is it fosters a community where people want to live. What you see is where they have gone soft on crime, where they've eliminated bail, or they have, you know, not held criminals accountable, or they say you can steal $951 of stuff before they're going to hold you accountable. Those types of bad policies, which usually stem back to the county attorneys or the state attorneys or district attorneys who have allowed politics to permeate into what should be a common sense issue, which is upholding the rule of law.

And so what we've seen is communities have fallen apart. They're not holding criminals accountable. They want to hold the average common purse accountable, but not the criminals. And now we're seeing an influx of crime involving illegals and to give you a perfect example. example of that. People don't want to accept this and they want to continue to say, well, it's not illegal committing crimes. They're not all criminals. No, nobody's saying they're all criminals. But what we are saying is the numbers don't lie. And the FBI statistics, first of all, they don't even, when we fill out the statistics because the FBI statistics don't come from them.

They come from us in local law enforcement. We pass the statistics on to them. But there is no box to check on their statistics for somebody who's in this country illegally. So how do they know what kind of crimes are being committed. But what we do know is here's a perfect example. Just recently after the hurricane down in the Tampa area, the sheriff reported that they had 45 arrests. 41 of those people that they arrested out of the 45 were illegals. And they contacted 196 suspicious people

that maybe they couldn't actually attribute a crime to, but they were suspicious. They were in the bad area. Maybe they caught them before they were going to do it. out of the 1966 that they had contact with, 163 of them were illegal as well. So those numbers alone tell a different story. And I think that we cannot ignore the fact that we've allowed a lot of criminals to come in to this country over the last four years under this administration's poor policies.

Yeah. It is fascinating to see how those border issues have really been thrust into the limelight because it has all of a sudden been such an issue that, you know, people have always been aware of, okay, we have to have secure borders. But it wasn't top of mind like it is now in speaking with voters in various states across the country. I think it's really fascinating to see that that is such a top of mind issue. And the polling indicates that as well consistently. For folks in your home state of Arizona, since Arizona is a border state, how are they thinking about this issue? Well, we're fed up with it. But you know, it doesn't impact us in Arizona. We get the jumping off point. This is where

they come through. This is where they smuggled like through my county. I'm not a border county. I'm one county off. But everybody who smuggles drugs or people ultimately is probably going to come through my county so they can get the Phoenix and then distribute it throughout the rest of the country. But if I were to line 20 people up that came into this country illegally and asked them, where are you going to go? Not one of them will say Arizona. Every one of them will say California, Massachusetts, New York, Chicago, Iowa, Alabama. I mean, they're mentioning every other state but ours. So we don't oftentimes get where they stay in Arizona.

A lot of that is because we have a ton of border patrol. We have a ton of ice. But what we are feeling is just like every state and every American family is we're feeling the effects of fentanyl. You know, look, I've been out talking about the effects of border for eight years that I've been to share. of. You know, look, it was really good under President Trump, and he listened to us. We had a seat at the table, and he was what he wanted to achieve success. And he did because he worked with local law enforcement. To the contrary, this administration, to my knowledge, is not met with a single share. They don't have, we don't have a seat at the table. They don't care what we think. They're just doing what they want, which is not secure the border. And it's having an impact on not just Arizona anymore, but it's having an impact on the rest of the country. And especially as it relates to fendezer. fentanyl. Fentinal poisons has become the leading cause of death in America between the ages of 18 and 45.

We are losing over 100,000 Americans a year right now to fentanyl poisons. How is this not a talking point on the media on the news every single night? You know, when, and I'm going to put this into perspective, and I don't want to take away from 9-11, but I want to put into perspective. On 9-11, we lost, I think, about 3,600 American lives that day. we're losing a hundred and we went to war for 20 years for that by the way right now china is putting fentanyl in the hands of the cartels they're bringing it in without firing a single shot or setting off a single bomb they are managing to kill a hundred thousand american civilians a year and our government doesn't talk about it they don't talk about it in their politics i don't hear their you know i don't

here Kamala Harris talking about it when she's talking in, you know, and her things. So to me, that is very disingenuine to the American people. And I think the majority of Arizonans and American people are wise to what's happened over the last four years. Yeah. Are the precursor chemicals for fentanyl, are they predominantly still coming from China, or are they now mainly coming from Mexico where the cartels have gained that ability to create the full drug in Mexico? No, they're still, to my knowledge, they're still predominantly coming from China. Okay.

And, you know, look, even if Mexico can produce it, it's probably coming in a much cheaper rate coming from China. Look, these are the opium wars of the 1800s, 1893. You know, a lot of Americans are not students of history anymore. They don't know what the opium wars were. While we didn't do that, that was England to China. They still consider us part of the West. And look, they've been very patient.

And I think a lot of people think that China is our friend. They're not. They do not have our best interests in mind. If they could crush our economy and crush our country and freedom, they would do it in a second if they could. And so you cannot be naive enough to think that there's not some ulterior note of. Here's the thing about the beauty of being in police work. You know, the average person has the luxury of bliss.

They think of everything is. okay and that there's no bad people in the world and oh no our government would never want to do that oh no china would never want to do that the beauty of being in law enforcement is and it's also a bad thing is we get to see and face evil every day and we see the depths that humans will go to to hurt one another to take advantage of one another and fortunately for americans they have law enforcement that hold the line and they don't get to they don't see the bad stuff in society for the most part because we take care of it but i think americans more and more seeing more and don't be naive to think that people don't have bad intentions even people in our own country they can have

very bad intentions why do you think this conversation around fentanyl isn't talked about why is this not talked about on the news every night why uh why are the campaigns not breaking this up and during every single speech. Because if you talk about fentanyl, you have to acknowledge the fact that you allowed 100,000 Americans to die that you could have stopped, by the way, because we know where the fentanyl comes from. Over 50% of the fentanyl in America, throughout a whole country, comes through Arizona's borders. We know who produces it. We know who brings it into this country. Yet our government doesn't do anything about it. And to talk about it would mean you'd have to accept responsibility to it. and to accept the responsibility would cost you an election,

you would have to acknowledge the fact that you allowed 100,000 Americans to die because you failed to secure the border or to stop those drugs or to hit those drug dealers and treat them as the terrorists that they are. And so why would they want to talk about that as politicians? Because that would inevitably lead back to them. And I believe that's why they don't talk about it. That would certainly be disastrous for their campaigns. And it should, like we as Americans, in Arizona in 2021, we had 33 children die from fentanyl poisons.

Seven were under the age of one. I mean, those statistics alone should get your elected officials unelected, you know. But we as Americans don't seem to want to hold our elected officials accountable. And we're, because we're offended by somebody's, the way somebody talks or the things, the, things they tweet, we're willing to go down the same road to destruction because our feelings might get hurt. I'm sick and tired of people and their hurt feelings. Look, I care about everybody, but I care about the country and I care about everybody to the point where I'm willing to speak out and fight for what is right. And I'm sorry, but feelings are going to get hurt along the way

when you try to protect your country. Yeah. For whoever is elected, whether it's Trump, or Harris, if you were offering them advice and saying, hey, day one in addressing our situation at the border and addressing the situation with fentanyl, you need to do X. What would you say? Day one, hard shutdown. You've got to take control of the border. You have to. Put your border patrol agents back out on the line because they're not. They're in their processing people. No more asylum claims. Keep the remain in Mexico program. Restore that. get that back in place. Those are all things you can do day one.

Stop the funding to the NGOs, no more tax dollars. We don't have tax dollars, and we certainly don't have tax dollars to go to people to pay for hotel rooms and gift cards and plane tickets and cell phones and all these other things that they're giving people that have come into this country illegally. And when people commit crimes, immediate removal from the country. You have to have some hard lines or people will continue to take advantage of our country.

You can't let these. people take advantage of programs that are in place to help Americans. We have veterans who are struggling. We have American families who are struggling. We saw firsthand what happened. The slap in the face that our federal government gave to the people out of North Carolina, the other victims of that hurricane that went through there, Hurricane Helene and then down in Tampa, you know, there was no money left for the Americans.

And when there was, they said, well, you can have $700. But the hoops that they made them jump through just to get it. only to have to pay it back when they come back on their taxes is really a slap in the face while they're giving thousands of dollars to people that came into this country illegally or here on a false asylum claim. Like that has to stop. And then what we start to do is we hold Congress and Senate accountable. You know, we've got to figure out a way to hold their feet to the fire so that they

pass common sense immigration reform, which would in essence help us secure the border as well. But day one, executive orders, restore a lot of those executive orders that President Trump has, which is why it makes him the best candidate for this job because this is one of our number one priorities between the economy and border. Those are both things that he has done an excellent job on in his previous and his presidency. And why would we not put the guy that did a good job in place instead of keeping the people that actually tore it to pieces? Sure. before I let you go, I want to get your opinion on will we know who won Arizona on election night, or do you think it's going to take longer to learn who won the state? Look, I'm pretty disappointed in the way we're doing elections in Arizona. It's ridiculous that

in 2024 we can't give you a number the night of the election, especially now what we're seeing as more and more Republicans and Democrats are turning their ballots in early. This should give you the ability to have a pretty good count the night of the election along with the votes that came in on election day, you should be able to give the people a pretty darn good idea. But unfortunately, they're already forecasting. They could take 10 days before they give you a final number, which I think just alludes to it just makes people think. It creates uncertainty.

It clouds the situation. It makes Americans feel like we're being cheated. And I think they can do much better. I think they've got to revamp a lot of our voting laws. voting laws. I think there needs to be some serious changes. But sadly, I would like to tell you, Virginia, that they're going to have a number that night. Unless it's Fox News, they called it 30 minutes after the numbers dropped the last time. So who knows? But I'm not highly optimistic in the way we're running elections in Arizona. Well, Sheriff, Mark Lamb, thank you for your time today.

We really appreciate your analysis on this election and specifically the state of Arizona. Well, thank you. Thanks for having me on. Well, with that, we're going to leave it right there for this first ever Saturday edition of the Daily Signal's DeepDive interview edition. We will be right back here with you on Monday for all of our election coverage here from the Daily Signal podcast and our first official relaunch of the Daily Signal podcast as top news in 10. we bring you the news in just 10 minutes, and we're keeping you informed on all of the issues that you need to know about, but we're making sure that we do it in a way that respects your time. We'll see you right back here Monday. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Get some rest. Next week is going to be a wild week for all of us here at The Daily Signal, and we're so excited to be bringing

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