Senate candidate Garcia proposes ‘drastic measure’ to address nation’s drug problem

On his campaign website, Republican Dr. Raul Garcia, who is running for the state of Washington’s U.S. Senate seat currently held by Democrat Maria Cantwell, outlines a roadmap titled, “Putting People First: Health, Leadership, Unity.”

As part of that roadmap, he lists a three-part plan of sorts that includes “Healthy and safe communities.”

“It is not healthy for us, our families, or our state, to be accepting of criminality that infringes upon our lives. It is not healthy to be accepting of people dying of drug addiction and mental health,” the page reads.

Garcia’s website also states a healthy country will provide “true and swift accountability for those who break the law.”

Both of those ideas are on display with a bill he would want to bring forward called the “Americans Against Meth and Fentanyl Act,” which he talked about on The Jason Rantz Show on AM 770 KTTH Tuesday.

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Garcia told Rantz that as an emergency physician, he still sees two to three people overdosing in his emergency departments every day. He added that he has been a doctor for 25 years and, “This is the worst killer I have seen.”

That is why Garcia is proposing what he called a “drastic measure” in his proposed law. In it, he put forward legal suggestions for drug dealers and addicts.

“(The proposed) law will bring about manslaughter charges for everyone (who) deals these drugs in our streets. And at the same time will also bring involuntary mandatory rehabilitation for those addicts that we find in our streets,” Garcia said. “These are drastic measures. But if we do not take them, we’re going to continue down this path where we’re losing our children and our communities.”

While Garcia noted the difficulty of pursuing manslaughter charges due to multiple drugs being in a person’s system at the time of death, Garcia did bring up another option to Rantz.

“We could bring felony charges of community endangerment,” Garcia said. “That is obvious (and includes) poisoning the water supply to a to a city. This these dealers, that’s exactly what they’re doing.”

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Garcia went on to tell Rantz that, being a scientific person, he wants to being to politics an approach to eliminate the root of the problem now. In this case, Garcia seeks to address the drug supply and those providing them to the citizens of this country.

“In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan was big on a war on drugs. But (he) really concentrated on the addicts in the street, not on the supply. And what I want to do is concentrate on the supply,” Garcia said. “If we eliminate the supply, then when these addicts go to rehab and come back, they will not have that dealer. They are in the street to sell them drugs.”

Looking at U.S. border policy

Their discussion about stopping the drug supply flow into the U.S. led to an exchange about border control and the Senate’s compromise recently presented to Republicans.

“I certainly feel that the Republicans rejected it because there were pieces of this legislation that didn’t really accomplish what we wanted to accomplish,” Garcia said.

He went on to take on the current administration for a lack of accountability of those who enter the U.S. every day.

“Any sovereign nation should have the right to vet every single person that comes in and out of their country. Every single person that comes in and out of our country, and the lack of discipline and the lack of leadership that we have in our border today with the administration that we have, there is insanity.

“We are not only not vetting everybody that comes in, but we are allowing crime and drugs to freely flow,” Garcia continued.

To listen to the entire interview, which also included Garcia recalling his time in Cuba as a child during the Fidel Castro regime, head here or click on the link below.

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Listen to the Jason Rantz Show on weekday afternoons from 3-6 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here. Follow Jason on X, formerly known as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.