It is known that in the United States, Canada, and also in some European countries, thousands of young people die from fentanyl every year. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than heroin.
During the Trump administration, much of the fentanyl that enters the country comes from China was put on the agenda, calling on the Asian nation to impose more stringent controls to prevent its manufacture and dispatch abroad.
A former U.S. State Department official claims that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is actively collaborating with drug traffickers in China and Mexico to transport and market fentanyl to the United States, partly to launder money.
Fentanyl, a fatal drug
Fentanyl has been used medically since 1968 as an intravenous anesthetic. But during the last few years, a powerful industry associated with drug trafficking has developed. It has placed fentanyl on the streets, causing the addiction of millions of young people, who, when not rescued in time, end up in tragic deaths or with irrecoverable brain damage.
The characteristic features of its use are reduced consciousness, pupil contraction, and respiratory depression associated with loss of reflexes.
Consumption of this potent drug can lead to cardiorespiratory arrest and subsequent death. If ingested orally, it is metabolized by the liver, meaning that, after consumption, most of the drug is eliminated as it passes from the intestine through the liver before reaching the blood system.
But the more addicted users choose a more direct and harmful route to achieve its sedative effects—administration by blood—an injection with a very high probability of causing death within minutes.
Where does it happen?
Currently, most of the laboratories, or pseudo-laboratories, that produce this drug are located in China. As early as October 2019, The New York Times published an investigation claiming that in China, there are “between 160,000 and 400,000 chemical companies operating legally, illegally or somewhere in between,” producing fentanyl.
Regardless of the legality status of these labs, they all fall within the institutional laziness tolerated by most of the Chinese regime’s anti-drug regulatory bodies.
Tens of thousands of labs produce fentanyl by compressing thousands of doses in a working day with rudimentary machines that can even be set up in a home garage.
Anne Milgram, director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), has recently stated that in addition to producing fentanyl in pill form for export, China is also sending the essential chemicals for local production to clandestine laboratories in Mexico.
Milgram said China is providing chemicals to Mexican criminal drug networks who mass-produce these fake pills, mostly sold as Alprazolam, Oxycodone, and Percocet but contain fentanyl.
The DEA director is alarmed that the leading cause of death in men between 18 and 45 is an overdose of this drug.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that in 2021, more than 105,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, and 66% of those deaths were related to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.
The CCP and the fentanyl business
The export of this deadly drug has undoubtedly become a multi-billion dollar business, and according to recent allegations, the CCP does not want to be left out.
“None of this can work without the involvement of the Chinese government,” said David Asher, a former U.S. State Department official, on Monday, Aug. 22.
Suppose these accusations are confirmed in the fight against drug trafficking today. In that case, we are no longer talking about simply trying to eliminate the cartels that have historically been in charge of drug production or the Chinese gangs that illegally produce pills in some shed in the suburbs of Beijing. Instead, the CCP apparatus would now be involved, making the situation much more complex.
Asher directly blamed China’s Ministry of State Security and the CCP’s United Front Work Department as players in the shipment of fentanyl to Mexico with the intention of “killing American children.”
But the business does not end there. According to Asher’s allegations, the drug money obtained by the CCP is laundered through the purchase of real estate in the United States.
It’s a double victory for the CCP. On the one hand, it manages to destroy the potential of millions of young Americans. But on the other hand, it advances its penetration in North America by acquiring land and property.
A report published on Aug. 23 reported that fentanyl seizures reached record levels in recent months, not because of increased controls but because of a greater flow of drugs and drug traffickers along the southern border of the United States with Mexico.
A total of 2100 pounds (950 kilos) were seized in July, three times more than in June, and an increase of more than 200% compared to May. U.S. Customs and Border Protection states that the drug trade is almost entirely controlled by the Sinaloa and Jalisco Cartel, Mexico’s two most powerful criminal organizations, reportedly colluding with the CCP.
Given the impermeability of the Chinese regime, it is challenging for the international community, much less the local one, to find direct evidence confirming the involvement of the CCP in drug trafficking.
However, knowing the excellent capabilities of the regime to control and suppress dissidents, it is more than suspicious that thousands of clandestine factories producing fentanyl are “leaking” and exporting their products unnoticed by the authorities.
