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It starts in China, runs through Mexico and ends in mortuaries all across America. This is the fentanyl trail -- that, so far, our government has failed to block. In 2003, according to the National Institutes of Health, 1,400 Americans died by overdosing on what that agency calls “synthetic opioids other than methadone (primarily fentanyl).” By 2008, President George W. Bush’s last full year in office, that death count had climbed to 2,306. By 2016, President Barack Obama’s last full year, it had climbed to 19,413. By 2020, President Donald Trump’s last full year, it had climbed to 56,516. In 2021, President Joe Biden’s first year in office, it climbed again to 70,601. In the first half of 2022, fatal fentanyl overdoses continued to rise in the United States. “The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that synthetic opioids (primarily fentanyl-related substances) may have resulted in almost 73,000 overdose deaths between July 2021 and June 2022,” the Congressional Research Service stated in a report it published on Dec. 8, 2022.