Although they try to dodge responsibility, China is responsible for much of the fentanyl that ends up in addicted American hands.

From Brookings. Synthetic opioids remain the source of the deadliest U.S. drug epidemic ever. Since 1999, drug overdoses have killed approximately 1 million Americans, an overdose lethality that has increased significantly since 2012 when synthetic opioids from China began supplying the U.S. demand for illicit opioids.

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Even though China placed the entire class of fentanyl-type drugs and two key fentanyl precursors under a controlled regulatory regime in May 2019, it remains the principal (if indirect) source of U.S. fentanyl. Fentanyl scheduling and China’s adoption of stricter mail monitoring has created some deterrence effects. Instead of finished fentanyl being shipped directly to the United States, most smuggling now takes place via Mexico. Mexican criminal groups source fentanyl precursors — and increasingly pre-precursors — from China, and then traffic finished fentanyl from Mexico to the United States. Scheduling of fentanyl and its precursors in China is not sufficient to stem flows to the United States….

Structural characteristics of synthetic drugs, including the ease of developing similar, but not scheduled synthetic drugs and their new precursors — increasingly a wide array of dual-use chemicals — pose immense structural obstacles to controlling supply, irrespective of political will to prohibit and regulate their use and enforce the regulations.

The evolution of China’s posture toward illicit methamphetamine production in China and the trafficking of meth precursors from China provides important insights into the patterns and limitations of China’s international law enforcement cooperation….

China takes counternarcotics diplomacy in Southeast Asia and the Pacific very seriously, but its operational law enforcement cooperation tends to be highly selective, self-serving, limited, and subordinated to its geopolitical interests. Nonetheless, after years of refuting international criticism for its role in meth precursor smuggling amidst burgeoning meth production in Asia, China has intensified its regional law enforcement cooperation at least with some countries….

China-Mexico law enforcement cooperation against the trafficking of fentanyl and precursor agents for meth and synthetic opioids remains minimal. China rejects co-responsibility and emphasizes that controls and enforcement are matters for Mexico’s own customs authorities and other Mexican law enforcement to address….

U.S. counternarcotics policy options vis-à-vis China can work through multilateral fora and emphasize China’s self-image as a global counternarcotics policeman and Beijing’s self-interest in preventing the emergence of synthetic opioid consumption in China, even as China points out its lack of domestic synthetic opioid use disorder….

Regardless of who provides it, fentanyl is ending up in American hands and hurting American people.

From Breitbart. During an interview with ABC on Tuesday aired on Tuesday’s edition of “Nightline,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram stated that China provides chemicals “to Mexico, to the criminal drug networks that are then mass-producing” fake prescription pills that are sold as though they’re prescription drugs, but are actually laced with fentanyl.

Milgram said, “…What we know is that China is providing chemicals to Mexico, to the criminal drug networks that are then mass-producing these fake prescription pills. They’re being sold as if they were Xanax, as if they were Oxy, as if they were Percocet. … They’re fentanyl. … Overdoses are the leading cause of death for men between the age of 18 and 45….”

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(Excerpts from Brookings and Breitbart. Photo Credit: Canva)