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.

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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 to 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.