Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Minden-Tahoe Airport in Minden, Nevada, on Oct. 8, 2022. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Former President Donald Trump says it is imperative that the Biden administration confronts China now over the U.S. fentanyl crisis.
“Must immediately meet with China on Fentanyl, and what they are doing in pouring it into the U.S. It is ripping our Country apart,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account on Oct. 6.
Trump estimated the U.S. death rate caused by fentanyl to be around 250,000 people a year. While official reports have indicated the rate to be increasing, the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported that death involving fentanyl rose 23 percent to 71,238 in 2021. The CDC estimated that a total of 107,622 drug overdose deaths last year.
This crisis “CANNOT CONTINUE,” Trump added.
Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans aged between 18 and 45, surpassing suicide, car accidents, and COVID-19, according to a December 2021 report from the U.S. advocacy group Families Against Fentanyl.
Most states in the United States are seeing a surge in fentanyl deaths. According to the group’s report published in February, fentanyl fatalities doubled in 30 states, tripled in 15 states, and nearly five times in six states, in the last two years. Alaska, Colorado, Louisiana, Mississippi, California, and Texas are the six states seeing a nearly five-fold increase in fentanyl deaths.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized approximately 47,000 rainbow-colored fentanyl pills, 186,000 blue fentanyl pills, and 6.5 pounds of meth hidden in a floor compartment of a vehicle at the Nogales port of entry on the southern border with Mexico on Sept. 3, 2022. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection)
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times stronger than heroin.
Trump’s urgent call came a week after China’s ambassador to the United States Qin Gang defended the Chinese regime in an interview with Newsweek, saying that the U.S. fentanyl crisis “was not created by China.”
Qin accused “some Americans” and the U.S. media of making “false and misleading claims” about how “China is the primary source of fentanyl in the United States.”
Last month, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) told The Epoch Times’ sister media outlet NTD that Qin has tried to lobby congressmen sitting on the House Intelligence Committee, getting them to defect blame away from China for causing the flow of illicit fentanyl into America.
China
Qin’s claims are not supported by facts, considering findings by two U.S. government reports.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), in its January 2020 report (pdf), laid out clearly that China was the “primary source” of fentanyl trafficked into the United States.
“China remains the primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked through international mail and express consignment operations environment, as well as the main source for all fentanyl-related substances trafficked into the United States,” the DEA report says.
Eight months before the publication of the DEA report, the Chinese regime designated fentanyl and many of its analogs as controlled substances, meaning that the production and sales of these opioids would be banned.
The DEA officials expressed optimism about the communist regime’s drug control measure, saying in the report that it had the “potential to severely limit fentanyl production and trafficking from China.”
Anne Milgram (R), administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, accompanied by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland (L), answers questions about the extradition and unsealing of an indictment charging former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, at the Department of Justice in Washington, on April 21, 2022. (Win McNamee/AFP via Getty Images)
But in February, the Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking, established by the 2020 defense policy bill, published a report saying that transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) in Mexico are buying precursor chemicals from China.
“Instead of shipping finished product to the United States, chemical and pharmaceutical businesses (or individuals within them) in the PRC [People’s Republic of China] either knowingly or unknowingly started sending other, controlled and uncontrolled chemical precursors from the PRC to Mexican TCOs that illegally synthesize fentanyl for U.S. markets,” the Commission’s report says.
The report singled out two particular TCOs—the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
The report added that Chinese regional officials “eschew enforcement” of the drug control measure and other regulatory efforts because they have a greater interest in seeing pharmaceutical and chemical sectors in their regions grow, which prop up local economies. Moreover, corruption could also have played a role in diminishing the ban’s effectiveness in fentanyl production, according to the report.
“They [China] need to take industry oversight and enforcement of rules more seriously. Authorities will need to penalize those who break rules or continue to engage in illegal activity,” the report says.
With precursor chemicals from China, the two Mexico cartels can make “an unlimited amount” of fentanyl, DEA Administrator Anne Milgram told CBS in August. She added that the two TCOs “are killing Americans with fentanyl at catastrophic and record rates like we have never seen before.”
“We have to stop it before it comes from China to Mexico to the U.S.,” Milgram said.
Biden’s Border
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized 12,303 pounds of fentanyl during the current fiscal year, which started in October last year. That amount was up from 10,586 pounds of seized fentanyl in the fiscal year 2021, 4,558 pounds in the fiscal year 2020, and 2,633 pounds in the fiscal year 2019.
On Oct. 4, DEA agents announced that a New Jersey woman had been arrested in Manhattan, who was concealing 15,000 candy-colored fentanyl pills inside a LEGO box. The DEA said it was the largest fentanyl bust ever in New York City.
Many Republican lawmakers say President Joe Biden’s border policies are fueling the lethal influx of fentanyl.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference at The Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando, Florida on Feb. 25, 2022. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Some GOP lawmakers have introduced bills aimed at tackling the fentanyl crisis. In September, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) introduced legislation that would make the distribution of fentanyl resulting in death a felony murder offense.
On Sep. 30, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) introduced a bill that would grant agents within the Homeland Security Investigations, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, independent authority to enforce America’s drug laws.
House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has said that Republican lawmakers will act decisively to deal with the crisis, should the GOP retake Congress in November.
“The number of Americans dying from Chinese fentanyl amounts to a commercial jet crashing every single day,” McCarthy wrote on Twitter on Sept. 16.
“This is a crisis. China must be held accountable—and Republicans will act decisively if we are entrusted with a majority in the next Congress.”
Frank Fang is a Taiwan-based journalist. He covers U.S., China, and Taiwan news. He holds a master's degree in materials science from Tsinghua University in Taiwan.
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