The ongoing fentanyl crisis is having detrimental effects on American society. Recently, federal law enforcement agencies have been cracking down on drug trafficking networks and prosecuting various Mexican drug cartels, showing their determination to dismantle the fentanyl trafficking chain. However, dismantling the ultimate source of the U.S. fentanyl crisis, namely, the supply of Chinese-made precursor compounds, still faces significant resistance from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is more than 50 times more potent than heroin, has been a leading cause of death among Americans aged 18–49 in recent years.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) worked with law enforcement agencies at all levels to seize more than 50.6 million fake prescription pills containing fentanyl in 2022, more than double the amount seized in 2021. In addition, law enforcement seized more than 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder. The total amount of fentanyl seized is enough to kill 379 million people, which is more than the total U.S. population of nearly 335 million.
According to data released by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), 107,735 people died from drug overdoses in the United States from August 2021 to August 2022, with two-thirds of those deaths involving synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl. Between 2019 and 2021, 196 Americans died from fentanyl poisoning every day.
The severity of the situation has made combating fentanyl trafficking a top priority for U.S. law enforcement. On May 2, the DOJ and its Joint Criminal Opioid Darknet Enforcement (JCODE) team and international partners announced that a multi-agency SpecTor enforcement effort in the United States, Europe, and South America resulted in 288 arrests, 117 firearms and 850 kilograms of drugs (including 64 kilograms of fentanyl products) seized, and $53.4 million confiscated in cash and cryptocurrency. The operation resulted in the largest number of arrests in JCODE’s history.
DEA official Anne Milgram said drug cartels in Sinaloa and Jalisco in Mexico and the global networks they operate are killing Americans by delivering fentanyl to communities in the United States in a variety of ways. Milgram emphasized that the DEA will relentlessly pursue these drug trafficking networks wherever they may be hiding.
On April 14, the DOJ announced criminal charges against several leaders of a Sinaloa-based transnational drug trafficking ring and their associates around the world. Prosecutors alleged that the group used cargo planes, private jets, submarines, container ships, supply ships, speedboats, fishing boats, buses, railcars, trailers, cars, and interstate or foreign carriers to deliver the drugs. The group is believed to maintain a distribution network of couriers, tunnels, and stash houses throughout Mexico and the United States to engage in drug trafficking.
Chinese Pharmaceutical Companies: A Link in the Chain
Prosecutors said Sinaloa drug trafficking organizations purchased precursor compounds from China and manufactured drugs such as fentanyl in Mexico before shipping them to the United States for distribution. Before reselling, drug traffickers often mix fentanyl powder with other drugs such as cocaine and heroin; or sell fentanyl pills as fake prescription painkillers, resulting in many Americans unknowingly ingesting the opioid.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland told a budget hearing of the House Appropriations Committee on March 29 that Chinese-made precursor compounds are the ultimate source of the fentanyl crisis in the United States, and that the DOJ is confronting the issue on multiple fronts.
Also on April 14, the DOJ announced criminal proceedings against two Chinese suppliers of fentanyl precursors to Mexican drug cartels, as well as four related individuals. On the same day, the U.S. Department of the Treasury (DOT) also placed two Chinese entities and five related individuals on its sanctions list.
In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin claimed on April 17 that repeated U.S. sanctions have severely undermined U.S.-China bilateral cooperation on counter-narcotics.
In reality, however, the CCP had announced a moratorium on cooperation with the United States on drug enforcement after former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August of 2022.
China’s Dual Enforcement Standard
Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology, a U.S. think tank, spoke at a March 23 hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives on “The CCP’s Business Model Fueling the Fentanyl Crisis.”
Felbab-Brown said that the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations have “devoted diplomatic focus to induce and impel China to tighten its regulations vis-à-vis fentanyl-class drugs and their precursor chemicals and to more diligently enforce these regulations.”
However, she said the CCP has always viewed cooperation on drug control as political leverage, and as tensions between the United States and China have increased, the likelihood of stronger cooperation between the two countries has diminished.
Felbab-Brown explained that in practice, the CCP’s international law enforcement cooperation has often been “highly selective, self-serving, limited and subordinate to its geopolitical interests.” At the same time, the CCP rarely takes action against the top brass of Chinese criminal organizations; and the CCP’s systemically corrupt environment even provides a party umbrella for criminal organizations.
Also at the March 23 hearing (pdf), former CIA intelligence officer and DOT agent John A. Cassara told Congress that the CCP is a dictatorship that controls China’s internet and routinely removes websites that do not meet its strict censorship standards. Therefore, the fact that the Chinese regime has allowed hundreds of websites promoting fentanyl and its precursors to operate, allowing the illegal fentanyl network to grow, is deeply troubling.
For example, Yuancheng Group, a chemical company in Wuhan, China, has registered on at least 112 websites and publishes fentanyl advertisements. Its records show that the group has sent fentanyl products to 43 countries.
In addition, despite its strict penalties for drug trafficking within China, the CCP usually imposes only civil penalties and small fines on Chinese companies that falsely label drug precursor chemicals for export. This constitutes a dual enforcement standard for drug sales within China and those that have an external impact, Cassara testified.
“Is CCP Inc. using or permitting narcotics trafficking to the West as a form of asymmetric warfare to advance its long-term strategic goals?” Cassara asked. The CCP’s fentanyl trafficking kills tens of thousands of people and destroys countless families and communities in the United States and around the world each year. It costs the United States hundreds of billions of dollars annually in lost productivity, health care, and criminal prosecutions. If the CCP sees this as a silent war with the United States, the impact is undoubtedly clear.