Voters by wide margins want US troops to fight Mexico's drug-smuggling cartels: ... trends now

Voters by wide margins support deploying the military across the border to stop Mexican drug cartels producing deadly drugs and smuggling them into the US, a DailyMail.com/TIPP poll shows.

Fully 61 percent of respondents support using US forces to tackle cartel paramilitaries head-on — a policy that's been championed by Republican presidential wannabes Tim Scott and Donald Trump.

The results signal growing frustration about lax security at the southern border and drug flows into the US, where nearly 110,000 people died from drug overdoses last year, according to federal data.

Trump, Scott, and other Republicans have called for deploying the US military to attack drug labs in Mexico, where the powerful opioid fentanyl is produced using precursor chemicals imported from China.

Plans also involve designating the Sinaloa, Jalisco New Generation, and other cartels as terrorist organizations and slapping them with sanctions so that leaders cannot move money or travel internationally.

Former president Trump said last week he would deploy military assets to fight the fentanyl crisis and 'inflict maximum damage' on cartel operations if elected in 2024.

He would also seek the death penalty to convicted drug dealers and human traffickers, he said.

'Under my leadership, we took the drug and fentanyl crisis head on, and we achieved the first reduction in overdose deaths in more than 30 years,' Trump said in a campaign video.

'Sadly, under Joe Biden, our hard-won progress has been surrendered, along with the surrender of our southern border.'

Trump, the front-runner in the Republican presidential nomination race, said 'fentanyl and other ultra-deadly poisons are pouring into our country unchecked — stealing more than 100,000 American lives every single year.'

The DailyMail.com/TIPP survey of nearly 1,400

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