President Biden said this weekend that he wants to launch a "major surge to stop fentanyl production and sale" that's driving 70,000 fatal overdoses in the U.S. every year.
There's fierce bipartisan pressure in Washington right now to do whatever it takes to stop Mexican drug cartels smuggling illicit fentanyl over the border.
But reporting by NPR found a broad consensus among drug policy experts that strategies now being put forward are unrealistic and won't keep fentanyl off American streets.
"My belief is there's absolutely no way to stop it," said Rep. David Trone, a Maryland Democrat who co-chaired a bipartisan commission on fentanyl smuggling.
Mexico's former ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhan, agrees drug interdiction efforts likely won't stop fentanyl.
"As long as both countries continue to hew to the old paradigms, which have not worked, absolutely not, we will not be moving the needle," Sarukhan told NPR.
Despite widespread skepticism, there's growing bipartisan talk of a renewed drug war, and tougher border policies, driven by the unprecedented surge of fentanyl deaths across the U.S.
In recent months, fentanyl has exploded to the top of the agenda in Washington.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border last week and called for more aggressive measures to stop traffickers.
"You cannot tell us this border is secure when now there's enough fentanyl in this country to kill every single...
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