FIRST ON FOX: A new report is shining the spotlight on the role that China plays in fueling the ongoing fentanyl crisis in the United States, calling for more action against the communist geopolitical foe from the federal government.
The Heritage Foundation released the report, a copy of which was obtained early by Fox News Digital, called “Holding China and Mexico Accountable for America’s Fentanyl Crisis.”
The report, by Andrés Martínez-Fernández and Andrew J. Harding, noted the massive numbers of deaths linked to the drug, which can be fatal in small doses and is estimated to have killed 75,000 Americans in 2023.
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“At the heart of this crisis is an intricate global partnership bringing together America’s top geopolitical adversary and powerful transnational criminal organizations,” they said.
Officials have frequently said that illicit fentanyl is created in Mexico using Chinese precursors and is then smuggled across the border by drug cartels. It is often laced in other drugs so that users do not know they are ingesting fentanyl.
The authors argue that while the Mexican role in the crisis is widely known, the Chinese moves are largely unknown.
“Indeed, unknown to most Americans, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is actively funding, supporting, and pushing America’s most deadly drug threat in history. The combined forces of deadly Mexican drug cartels and hostile Chinese ambitions have delivered to the United States a destabilizing crisis and a death toll that each year eclipses the total of U.S. casualties from the Vietnam War,” they wrote.
They note congressional reports that found the CCP directly subsidizes the manufacturing and export of illicit fentanyl materials, as well as a tax rebate program that actually incentivizes the export of some fentanyl precursors in a way the authors say undercuts Chinese claims that they cannot control illegal activities by smugglers and cannot identify which manufacturers are exporting them.
“It may also be possible that China might not have a full understanding of the specific precursor shipment volumes because it does not allocate a sufficient number of inspectors over its pharmaceutical chemical manufacturing industries,” they wrote.
The report finds that chemicals are arriving through air cargo, postal facilities and maritime routes. The authors also point to reports of an increased Chinese role in networks in Canada.
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The Biden administration has taken a number of moves to crack down on the fentanyl crisis, including greater access to treatment and increased funding and technology at ports of entry, where the majority of fentanyl is seized. The report notes that the Treasury has sanctioned dozens of individuals and entities involved with smuggling, and has used diplomacy to get China to pledge tougher action against suppliers.
However, the authors warned that those successes “are likely to ring hollow,” arguing that China has historically used negotiations to get other concessions from the U.S.
“Furthermore, China’s announcements “don’t carry substantial costs for [its] chemicals industry,” meaning, as long as suppliers can evade rules—which has been documented for years, the production of fentanyl precursors will continue to prove profitable,” they continued. “If past patterns are repeated, then the Biden Administration’s fentanyl diplomacy is unlikely to curtail this deadly scourge.”
The report also criticizes what it calls “complicity” between corrupt Mexican officials and narco-smugglers, arguing that the government has shed the pretext of going after the cartels.
The report recommends that the U.S. strategy must accept that it “lacks good-faith partners in both the Chinese and Mexican governments.” Instead, they argue that the U.S. should ask U.S. intelligence agencies to publicly expose Chinese involvement in fentanyl trafficking, including increasing penalties for financial institutions.
They argue the U.S. should also facilitate the reshoring and nearshoring of the pharmaceutical supply chains away from China to areas with a competitive advantage, while also working to uncover Mexican “complicity” in the crisis.
“If the U.S. government continues to passively accept the fentanyl crisis as simply another illicit drug challenge and fails to prevent the CCP from facilitating this deadly trade, hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of Americans are at risk of losing their lives,” they said.
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