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Wrongheaded ‘solution’: Punish legal businesses

In the eyes of many liberals, businesses are generally “wrong,” even evil. Yet never evil enough to be put out of business. Why do that when they can be squeezed to fund government schemes, right?

So it is in Minnesota, where Democratic lawmakers, backed by Gov. Tim Walz, are moving a bill that would impose “registration fees” as high as $500,000 on manufacturers and wholesalers who distribute opioids in the state. We’re talking here about those who legally manufacture and sell what are legal products. Proponents of the plan say the drug industry must “pay its fair share” for the opioid crisis, i.e. the fact that hundreds die in Minnesota every year from overdoses. (Minnesota has a population of 5.5 million, by the way.)

The bill, of course, supports the other inherent liberal notion that human beings cannot be held to account for their own lives or actions. It must be someone else’s fault, and the government should bail them out. Or bail out county agencies dealing with all the addiction. Never mind rethinking the concept that the government has to play addiction counselor.

Meanwhile, we learned this week that the Border Patrol on Saturday made the largest seizure of fentanyl in the agency’s history. Officers stopped a 26-year-old man at the Nogales border checkpoint and found more than 250 pounds of the deadly drug. Authorities also found 395 pounds of methamphetamine.

Which makes you wonder how many tons of illegal drugs are pouring over the border every year.

But why bother with border security? The focus should be on punishing licensed drug manufacturers making a legal product that physicians — not drug-makers — prescribe, right?

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