PHILADELPHIA — Visiting families of fentanyl-overdose victims on the weekend, Pennsylvania GOP Senate hopeful Dave McCormick demanded a more aggressive stance against the Mexican drug gangs fueling America’s crisis.
“If you could designate the cartels as a terrorist organization, then you could start to use drones and special operations to take out the manufacturing, the distribution and all that because Mexico is deeply compromised by the cartels,” McCormick said at a Fentanyl Fathers roundtable Saturday.
“You have to be willing to break some glass,” McCormick added, noting 120,000 Americans — the equivalent of “two Vietnams” — died from fentanyl overdoses last year.
Joined by his wife Dina Powell McCormick and retired Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), McCormick heard from a handful of parents whose children died from overdosing on substances laced with fentanyl in recent years.
McCormick already earned the endorsement of Blair County Sheriff Jim Ott, who lost his son Josh to an overdose in April 2020. The law-enforcement officer believes the tough border policies Republicans like McCormick and former President Donald Trump advocate are a key component to curbing the drug trade and, by extension, addiction.
But the fentanyl crisis goes beyond just addiction, McCormick told The Post.
He said the “defining characteristic” of stories he hears from bereaved parents is their child did not know they’d be ingesting fentanyl before overdosing.
“It is being cut into illegal [substances], everything from marijuana to what proceeds to be over-the-counter drugs,” McCormick said, vowing to make addressing fentanyl one of his top priorities if elected to the Senate.
Inside the small northeast Philadelphia home hosting the event, parents like Anne Funder told McCormick about their lost loved ones.
Funder lost her 15-year-old son, Weston, to an accidental overdose she attributes to peer pressure while living in California in 2022.
Now residing in New Jersey, she said telling Weston’s story to an audience of millions at this year’s Republican National Convention gave her some hope.
“It’s the first time I feel like my son had a purpose because he’s saving lives,” Funder said. “I get to tell parents, look right at them and say, ‘Talk to your son and daughter about peer pressure.’”
Philadelphia mom Bonnie Kane lost her only child, son Morgan, to an overdose in 2017 when he was just 20 years old. The mother-son pair were very close, Bonnie told The Post, and he had been open with her about his addiction struggles. He was in the process of trying to get clean when he succumbed to a fatal dose of fentanyl a longtime friend gave him.
Despite the heartbreak, Kane says she has since forgiven that friend, who was subsequently incarcerated for his role in Morgan’s death, and shows up yearly for his parole hearings.
“To me, it’s harder to hold hate in my heart,” Kane told The Post. “Maybe if it was a stranger, I wouldn’t feel the same.”
Kane has since become a licensed mental-health practitioner to help other young people work through their struggles with addiction.
