We are rightly alarmed by the devastation caused by fentanyl. Its overdoses are sudden, tragic and impossible to ignore. But our national fixation on fentanyl obscures a quieter, deadlier truth: alcohol and tobacco continue to kill far more Americans, year after year, with little urgency or outrage.

Tobacco kills patiently — through cancer, heart disease and respiratory failure — its victims blamed for their own suffering while the product remains legal, taxed and marketed. Alcohol kills through liver disease, poisoning, car crashes, falls and violence. These deaths rarely make headlines. They arrive slowly, predictably and with a societal shrug.

Fentanyl, by contrast, kills fast and visibly. Its victims are often younger, its role unmistakable, and its presence framed as an external menace. That visibility drives fear, funding and political action. Meanwhile, alcohol and tobacco enjoy cultural acceptance and powerful industry protection, even as their combined death toll dwarfs that of illicit opioids.

This is not to minimize the fentanyl crisis — it is real and catastrophic. But our selective outrage reveals an uncomfortable bias. We tolerate the deadliness of substances that are familiar and profitable, while treating others solely as moral or criminal failures. If death were our true measure of danger, alcohol and tobacco would be addressed with the same urgency we reserve for fentanyl. Instead, we accept their toll as the cost of normal life.

James McGuire 
Waldoboro