Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdulrahman El-Sayed has criticized anti-fentanyl laws designed to punish drug dealers and deter drug use as draconian while advocating for supervised consumption sites where individuals can use illegal drugs under observation.
El-Sayed has accused his Republican Senate opponent, Mike Rogers, of voting to “EXPAND the opioid epidemic,” despite previously criticizing laws designed to punish fentanyl dealers and deter drug use while advocating for supervised spaces where individuals can use illegal drugs.
During a June 27, 2023, episode of his podcast, El-Sayed said:
While claiming to be fighting fentanyl, the conservative response has amounted to doing one of two things: blaming the influx of fentanyl on the southern border or passing draconian anti-fentanyl laws designed to punish dealers and deter use. These bills were proposed in 46 of 50 states. Virginia codified fentanyl as a ‘weapon of terrorism.’ Thirty states have a drug-induced-homicide statute on the books. Look, fentanyl is a scourge. There’s no doubt about it. And we absolutely need to protect unsuspecting people from it. But the question is, does the law-and-order, throw-the-book-at-them approach actually work?
Months earlier, in a December 20, 2022, podcast episode, he stated:
The other important part of this, though, is making sure that there are spaces where people can use in an observed manner. You know, the challenge is that in a world where we criminalize drug use, people will hide their drug use. And if they hide, that’s what creates the risk of potentially overdosing in a situation where no one sees you and potentially dying. And so one of the things that we have to think about is how do we create spaces where people can use safely? And I know folks out there might be thinking, ‘Well, aren’t you empowering people to use drugs?’ Well, what you’re doing is empowering them not to die because of the disease of addiction.
In an April 20, 2026, Washington Post opinion piece, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Charles Fain Lehman and former White House drug-policy adviser Kevin A. Sabet cited controlled studies in British Columbia and Ontario that found no reduction in overdose deaths or hospitalizations after supervised consumption sites opened. The authors also noted that a federal appeals court ruled that a proposed supervised consumption site in Philadelphia would violate the federal “crack house” statute.
RNC spokesman Hunter Lovell told Breitbart News, “Abdul El-Sayed doesn’t want to punish fentanyl traffickers; he wants to make their job easier. While fentanyl kills Michiganders every single day, El-Sayed is out here defending the people poisoning our communities.”
As Breitbart News reported Monday, El-Sayed is benefiting from $30 million in spending by the Senate Majority PAC despite campaigning against wealthy donors’ influence in politics. The PAC has received $15 million in contributions linked to individuals with reported associations involving Jeffrey Epstein, including Vinod Khosla and Jon Stryker. George Soros’s Democracy PAC and Michael Bloomberg’s American Opportunity Action have also contributed to the group.
The PAC committed an additional $10 million to Michigan’s Senate race after El-Sayed met with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer last week.
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