Sullivan blames Biden for Alaska drug trafficking epidemic that began years ago

“Damn it, Mr. President. Do your job,” Sen. Dan Sullivan said in a post on social media Sept. 28. “Secure the border. Damn it, Secretary (Alejandro) Mayorkas. Secure the border. Do your job.”

Sullivan salts his partisan pronouncements with oaths to show he’s angry.

A screenshot from Sen. Dan Sullivan’s social media accounts blaming the Biden administration for drug deaths in Alaska.

He did it on this occasion while pointing to a story in the Louisville Courier-Journal headlined “Targeting the Last Frontier: Mexican cartels send drugs into Alaska, upping death toll.”

The fault for this lies entirely with President Joe Biden and his underlings, according to Sullivan. “Biden is allowing drug cartels to invade Alaska,” Sullivan claims.

“Alaskans and Americans are dying and you’re responsible,” he said of Biden.

But it turns out that the situation is a great deal more complicated than Sullivan says. Damn it.

A Courier-Journal reporter spent nearly two weeks in Alaska, returning to Kentucky with a story about the scourge of illegal narcotics in Alaska.

This crisis is real. The state says there were 220 opiod overdose deaths in Alaska from June 2022 to May 2023. About half of those who died were between 25 and 44.

There were 146 drug overdose deaths in 2020 and 245 in 2021. Synthetic narcotics, including fentanyl, caused 150 of those deaths, this state report says.

The danger stems in part from the strength of the drugs. Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine.

One of the main anecdotes in the Kentucky newspaper concerns Mexican drug trafficker Jorge Cardenas, who set up shop in Girdwood.

“Jorge Cardenas and his crew blanketed the area with meth and introduced customers to fentanyl,” the newspaper said.

“He took advantage of customers who didn't realize the dangers of fentanyl, and his network expanded to Juneau and Anchorage.”

The story should have said exactly when this happened.

Cardenas was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison in 2018 during the Trump administration. He had started selling large amount of illegal drugs in Alaska in 2012 during the Obama administration.

“An initial tip about Cardenas came into the Juneau Police Department in November 2013. Police were told Cardenas was traveling to Juneau with meth,” the Anchorage Daily News reported. That was during the Parnell administration.

“Cardenas was stopped at the airport along with his girlfriend, and after a search of his vehicle, police found nearly 10 ounces of suspected methamphetamine in a bag under the front seat. Cardenas was cited for driving with a suspended license, but no federal drug charges were filed at the time, according to court records.”

Perhaps Sullivan should direct some of his manufactured wrath at that failure.

The key character highlighted in the newspaper drug-dealing story is Miguel Baez Guevara, who had been under investigation for five years before he was arrested two years ago during the Biden administration. He is awaiting trial.

“The indictment and arrest are part of an ongoing, large scale drug trafficking investigation dubbed “Operation Albondiga” which has resulted in the arrest and criminal charges of 23 individuals since 2016,” the Justice Department said.

A third character in the story is Jarese Martinez, who was sentenced in 2018 to 10 years in prison.

Sullivan acts as if this epidemic came into being and exists only because of the Biden administration. That’s not true. Damn it.

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