Brian Laird on WNYC, another Health Tuesday segment.

Since September, the U.S. military has carried out 20 strikes, as you probably heard, on boats allegedly smuggling fentanyl in the Caribbean

and the eastern Pacific, killing at least 80 people, not the fentanyl, the U.S. military strikes.

President Trump has claimed, with no evidence, that each destroyed boat saves the life of 25,000 Americans,

presumably by stopping the flow of fentanyl into the country.

It's the Trump administration's expedient solution to a complicated problem.

America could be made, quote, great again,

if drug trafficking could only be stopped,

if we could only go back to the days before the fentanyl crisis, which is real.

But our next guest argues that, quote, there is no wholesome traditional drug-free America that we can return to.

Americans have always used a lot of drugs, even in the white suburbs and rural areas that Mr. Trump supporters call the real America, unquote.

This comes from the article called, I am a drug historian.

Trump is wrong about fentanyl in almost every way.

So joining us now is David Hertzberg, Professor of History and Director of the Drugs Health

and Society program at the University at Buffalo.

Professor Hertzberg, thanks for your article.

Thanks for sharing it with us.

Welcome to WNYC.

Thanks for having me.

You write that the first drug crisis came in the gilded age of the late 19th century.

Tell us that story.

So this is a period of time in which the American economy was undergoing industrialization,

...