Melissa Hart: Is Pittsburgh’s fentanyl epidemic finally subsiding?

Pittsburgh is finally starting to get fentanyl under control, and that’s no accident. 

In May, Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday disbanded a major drug trafficking ring operating across western Pennsylvania. Fourteen individuals were charged for distributing fentanyl, cocaine, and other deadly drugs throughout the Pittsburgh region. In March, the Department of Justice also reported the sentencing of a Pittsburgh native on drug trafficking charges. These are the kinds of coordinated law enforcement efforts that communities are begging to see more aggressively and regularly.

Now that the Pennsylvania Attorney General has a true partner in the US Department of Justice (DOJ) with Attorney General Pam Bondi, we can expect to see more crackdowns on crime and civil enforcement in the months to come. 

After years of political prosecutions and crippling lawsuits against people running legitimate businesses in sectors they didn’t like — to gain control of the private sector —  the new DOJ is back to the basics of prosecuting crime and working with local law enforcement to keep American communities safe. This new prioritization of community needs over political needs is already making a difference in western Pennsylvania, where fentanyl overdoses have devastated many families in areas I once represented, from Aliquippa to New Kensington and McKeesport to New Castle.

In Allegheny County, over 90 percent of the drug overdose deaths in during 2022 and 2023 involved opioids, with fentanyl being a significant contributor. Yet, during that period, President Biden’s DOJ was focused on suing companies for political reasons instead of focusing ending the criminal activity which causes so much destruction and human misery.  

On the business side, take the Visa case. President Biden’s antitrust lawyers accused the company of monopolizing debit cards, even though nearly 40 percent of debit transactions don’t use Visa at all. The goal wasn’t justice. It was to score political points while Pennsylvania’s small businesses — like the independent shops along our neighborhood’s main streets, in Dormont or Sewickley, which were left worrying that their payment systems would be upended by Washington, DC politics.

The Visa suit was nothing new. President Biden’s DOJ also targeted the healthcare and food processing industries, which employ many thousands of Pennsylvanians and have been integral to revitalizing communities devastated by deindustrialization. It even sued grocery chains, 7-Eleven convenience stores— you name it, the prior administration’s DOJ took them to court.

With politically driven lawsuits as the focus, President Biden’s DOJ was left with little time or resources to stop the fentanyl that was pouring across US borders and into western Pennsylvania. As a former member of the US House Judiciary Committee, I was disgusted by the dereliction of the duty of and misuse of prosecutors in President Biden’s Justice Department.  We now see a focus on what the public has been demanded, like stopping the cartels and drug traffickers who flood our streets with deadly drugs. Pennsylvania communities are seeing the difference. 

President Trump quickly set about reining in and depoliticizing the DOJ with an experienced Attorney General who’d proven herself as a top law enforcement official as Florida’s Attorney General.

Under President Trump, the government has targeted crime, not businesspeople. We can see results already. In March, illegal border crossings reached a new low, down 95 percent from where the huge numbers we so mystifyingly endured in March 2024. This also means less fentanyl making it to Pittsburgh-area neighborhoods. 

President Trump has boosted federal cooperation with local and state authorities to combat gang violence in cities like McKeesport and Homestead. His team is helping rural counties fight human trafficking, which will protect the innocent and help preserve our security along highways like Interstates 70 and 79 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

The business community is reaping the benefits from the DOJ’s change of leadership too. Trump’s Justice Department recognizes that if we want to grow the small business sector, we need to support, not prosecute innovation. Law-abiding businesspeople no longer need to worry about losing their investment in a “disfavored” business by being sued at random by the government. Such an honest environment is necessary to creating the stability on which prosperity is built. The president and his cabinet, from Treasury Secretary Bessent to EPA Director Zeldin, are working with state leaders to attract investment and promote opportunity, especially in underserved areas like western Pennsylvania’s river valleys and northern tier counties.

This is great news for Pennsylvania and America alike. For too long, the rule of law was used to punish growing businesses, not to help individuals and families to succeed. Under President Trump’s domestic agenda America is realizing the good economic growth policies and a fair legal climate that are necessary for us to begin moving in the right direction again.

Melissa Hart represented western Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives. She served on the House Judiciary Committee.