HOWARD BUFFETT’S NEW BOOK: OUR 50-STATE BORDER CRISIS

Our 50-State Border Crisis: How the Mexican Border Fuels the Drug Epidemic Across America. The book takes a fresh and hard look at how we think about border security, and in particular how it relates to the growing opioid epidemic in the U.S.

The book includes forewords written by Cindy McCain, co-chair of the Arizona Governor’s Council on human trafficking, and U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-North Dakota). Buffett’s approach to the issue is very even-handed and doesn’t fall into the typical right-left debates on this issue. He makes the case for thinking about border security as a national security threat as it relates to our domestic drug crisis (21x more people killed annually than on 9/11), while also humanizing the plight of desperate migrants fleeing violence in their home countries, and offers five recommendations (not a wall) for how we secure our border.

About Howard:
Howard G. Buffett is Chairman and CEO of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. A farmer, businessman, elected official, photographer, law enforcement officer, and philanthropist, he has dedicated his life to finding solutions for some of the world’s most serious and intractable problems, including hunger, conflict, wildlife trafficking, border security, and public safety. He is currently serving as the sheriff of Macon County, Illinois.

More about the book:
From Howard G. Buffett — philanthropist, deputy sheriff, New York Times bestselling author, and son of Warren Buffett — an eye-opening, myth-busting take on the border crisis, showing how the drugs coming across our border, creating an epidemic that touches all fifty states.

Howard G. Buffett has seen first-hand the devastating impact of cheap Mexican heroin and other opiate cocktails on the U.S. heartland. Fueled by failing border policies and lawlessness in Central America, drugs are pouring over the nation’s southern border in record quantities, turning Americans into addicts and drug mules–and killing them at record levels.

Politicians talk about a border crisis and an opioid crisis as separate issues. To Buffett, a landowner on the U.S. border with Mexico and a volunteer law enforcement officer in Illinois and Arizona, these are intimately connected. Ineffective border policies created in Washington, D.C. not only put residents in border states like Texas and Arizona in harm’s way, they put Americans in places as far away as Pennsylvania and Vermont at risk. And, contrary to popular myth, what’s at stake on the border isn’t the safety of our jobs–it’s our lives.

Mexican cartels have grown astonishingly powerful by exploiting both the gaps in our expensive yet unsuccessful border security strategy and the desperate people trying to find a safe haven in the U.S.–all while profiting enormously off America’s growing addiction to drugs. It’s time for Americans to re-think our southern border-and the solution isn’t just a wall. Instead, Buffett outlines a more realistic, effective, and bi-partisan approach to fighting cartels, strengthening our national security, and tackling the roots of the chaos below the border.

Courtesy: Hachette Books

Related links:  Our 50-State Border Crisis