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North Carolina Rep. Addison McDowell introduced legislation in 2025 that would improve the U.S. Coast Guard’s ability to fight drug overdoses on vessels.
Most people don’t realize that, though the smallest branch of the U.S. military, the U.S. Coast Guard is responsible for “stopping drug smugglers, pushing back on threats from China and Russia in the Arctic, and keeping nearly $3 trillion in maritime trade flowing safely to American ports,” McDowell wrote in an article for the Washington Examiner.
“As vice chairman of the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee, I’ve seen how the Coast Guard’s mission doesn’t just protect our coastlines. It affects every single state. It affects families like mine in central North Carolina. Safe waterways and secure shipping routes matter whether you live in a big coastal city such as Wilmington or a small inland town such as Wallburg. And when it comes to stopping fentanyl before it ever hits our streets, the Coast Guard is on the front line.” (MORE NEWS: ‘No Tax Dollars For Terrorists’ Passes House)
The new legislation aims to “stop drug smuggling on maritime vessels, makes naloxone available across the force, and brings the Coast Guard into our national overdose tracking system,” McDowell noted, adding that his own brother passed away in 2016 due to fentanyl poisoning.
“But Coast Guardsmen are doing all this while being stretched to the breaking point. The Coast Guard has been forced to run what should be a $20 billion operation on less than $14 billion a year. It is short nearly 5,000 service members, about 8% of its total workforce. Its aircraft are aging, some of its cutters are barely seaworthy, and more than 50% of its shore infrastructure is past its service life. Meanwhile, Russia has over 50 operational icebreakers. China is building more every year. And we’ve got just two — one of them over 45 years old,” he continued. “This is clearly a national security issue. It’s time Congress started treating it like one.”
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