Cato Institute VP Dismisses Mass Fentanyl Deaths: Voluntary Overdoses ‘Are Not Homicides’

The open-borders Cato Institute is on the defensive after one of its top pro-migration advocates dismissed the overdose deaths of many young Americans as “voluntary” transactions.

The statement came a day after Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI) grilled Alex Nowrasteh — Cato’s vice president for economic and social policy studies — about his support for President Joe Biden’s mass migration.

Tiffany asked Nowrasteh during the Wednesday hearing if his calculations about migrant crimes included drug deaths.

Nowrasteh dismissed drug overdoses as commercial accidents: “Do you mean the people who voluntarily took fentanyl and overdosed under that tragic situation? No, those are not homicides, sir.”

That statement came shortly after Nowrasteh had said: “Every death and every murder is a tragedy, and those individual criminals should be punished to the fullest extent of the law, but that is not a reason to punish other people [migrants] who are not criminals.”

Nowrasteh’s dismissal echoes his prior support for the decriminalization of drugs and easy migration across U.S. borders, saying, “People want drugs, others want to sell them, and the government gets in the way.”

Nowrasteh’s dismissal of ordinary Americans and discarded Americans helps to explain recent political revolutions, including the 2016 and 2024 elections of Donald Trump and the June 2025 mayoral nomination of Indian immigrant Zohran Mamdani in New York.

Cato was originally named the Charles Koch Foundation and is governed and funded by wealthy business leaders. In 2024, the organization received almost $63 million from donors as part of its $79 million yearly revenue.

On Thursday, Cato did damage control with a tweet saying, “You may have seen @AlexNowrasteh’s testimony on Capitol Hill yesterday. He’s here to clarify some information.”

But Nowrasteh offered a brief misdirection as he evaded the central issue of his long-standing political support for the easy transfer of drugs across national barriers to U.S. drug addicts. He said:

Yesterday, I testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee, and boy, was it a heated and emotional exchange. First off, I just want to repeat that I support prosecuting illegal immigrant criminals to the fullest extent of the law.

Secondly, there is a big problem with fentanyl overdoses in the United States, and that needs to be addressed in a serious and thoughtful manner.

But lastly, we need facts in this debate about immigration, Illegal immigrants and klegal immigrants have a substantially lower crime rate than native born Americans, and we just can’t have a productive debate and discussion about public policy without those facts.

One of the facts in the immigration debate is that the federal government’s long-standing policy of quiet tolerance for illegal immigration helped criminals establish cross-border drug-smuggling networks that have killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.

The massive inflow also shifted wealth from young couples, leading to a drop in birth rates. 

The resulting massive population loss has spurred pro-migration advocates to argue that the government must import yet more migrants to help expand business activity. 

But Trump was elected to shut down the huge inflow of illegal migration.

Now that the cross-border inflow of illegal migrants has stopped, drug deaths are dropping as many addicts are being rescued by emergency treatments.

Watch the Tiffany vs Nowrasteh comment here: