President Obama’s showmanship is reaching new highs.  He even shed tears to promote his gun-control agenda last week. Today, during his widely televised State of the Union Address, he will be calling attention – emotionally, no doubt –  to an empty seat next to Michelle Obama, “for the victims of gun violence who no longer have a voice.” 

Obama falsely claims more people die in the U.S from gun violence than from car accidents and illicit drugs. But statistics published last November by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)  tell a different story; In 2013 (the last available numbers) the growing drug epidemic killed more than 46,000 people in the U.S. Car accidents caused 35,369 deaths and Firearms 33,636. Since then, as the nationwide heroin addiction increased, so did the number of people dying from an overdose. Don’t they deserve the president’s tears? An empty seat in the First Lady’s guest box?   

The Obama administration’s 2010 National Drug Control Strategy predicted that by 2015, drug related deaths would decline by 15 percent. Instead, it has risen by 30 percent. As this abysmal result has been heavily criticized, the administration claimed it had no way to predict the surge in heroin use, which led to 440 percent rise in overdose deaths. However, they did little, if anything, to stop the surge of purer, cheaper heroin on America’s streets. 

The “21st century approach to drug policy,” as advocated in Obama’s 2010 National Drug Control Strategy, had miserably failed to stop both heroin and cocaine production, importation to and distribution on the streets of cities and rural areas in America. 

The Obama administration’s principal objection to fighting and winning wars only exacerbated the shortcomings of the ‘War on Drugs.’ Indeed, by December 31, 2014, when Obama ended “Operation Enduring Freedom,” Afghanistan saw more than 40-fold increase in poppy cultivation, opium and heroin production and distribution. The flourishing drug trade led to the resurgence of the Taliban and other radical Islamist groups and to the festering corruption that has swallowed much of the billions of dollars the U.S. gave in aid to Afghanistan, further destabilizing the country and the region.

The skyrocketing cultivation of Afghan poppy and production and global distribution of heroin opened the financial floodgates that increasingly feed Islamist terrorism, crime, and insurgency worldwide.

The U.N. estimated in 2013 that more than 32 million of the world’s adults, including millions of Americans, were addicted to opium and its derivates (morphine, heroin, and pharmaceutical opioids). But Mr. Obama shed no tears for them. His selective hearing failed to pick up their voices or the voices of the victims who were terrorized by Islamist groups, the likes of ISIS and al Qaeda. He even failed to hear the voices of the American soldiers who were killed or maimed by weapons paid for with drug money.

Not only has Mr. Obama failed to hear their voices, but he also wants you to ignore these voices, as he does. Watching his State of the Union Address, remember those whose voices he wishes to silence.