In the piece, “I Am a Drug Historian. Trump Is Wrong About Fentanyl in Almost Every Way,” Herzberg draws on historical research to challenge common assumptions about drug use in the United States. He places today’s opioid crisis in a longer context, showing how patterns of drug use and addiction have shaped American life across time, including in communities often left out of current debates.

Herzberg’s work highlights how history can inform present day policy conversations and public understanding. His research invites readers to look beyond simplified explanations and consider the broader social and historical forces that shape drug use and response.

It’s one of President Trump’s favorite stories: The Democrats weakened the borders, allowing Mexican drug cartels to smuggle fentanyl into the United States, where it devastated white suburban and rural communities. To stop this “evil scourge,” he has imposed tariffs on China for its role in fentanyl production. His administration is reportedly considering military strikes in Latin America. And Mr. Trump has built up the U.S. military presence in the Caribbean. “I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country,” he told reporters of his campaign of deadly strikes.

The killing has already started. Since September, the military has carried out 20 strikes on boats supposedly smuggling drugs in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, killing at least 80 people. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth celebrates these “lethal kinetic strikes” by posting aerial footage of the explosions on social media. Mr. Trump falsely boasts that each destroyed boat saves the lives of 25,000 Americans.

The brazenness is shocking. There is apparently no time to nitpick about imposing the death penalty on civilians never formally accused of a crime or to consider the destructive precedents of extending U.S. military force into the Americas.

The fentanyl story is based on an argument about history: The United States went from greatness to crisis because open-border Democrats betrayed the honest, hardworking people of America by exporting jobs and allowing in foreign drugs. Stopping the drugs, Mr. Trump wants us to believe, will let the wholesome, traditional American culture that he idealizes flourish again. As a historian of drugs, I can tell you that this argument is wrong in almost every way.

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’s supporters call the “real America.”

The first drug crisis came in the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. In the unregulated, buyer-beware markets of that era, sales of pharmaceutical morphine, cocaine and heroin rose precipitously. Addiction rates skyrocketed, mostly among the white, propertied class of Americans who had ready access to a doctor.