New report warns of China’s role in destroying American families with deadly drugs: ‘Destabilizing crisis’ – DNyuz

FIRST ON FOX: A new report sheds light on China’s role in fueling the ongoing fentanyl crisis in the United States, calling for greater federal action against the communist geopolitical foe.

The Heritage Foundation published the report, a copy of which was previously obtained by Fox News Digital. The report is titled “Holding China and Mexico Accountable for America’s Fentanyl Crisis.”

The report by Andrés Martínez-Fernández and Andrew J. Harding points to the enormous number of deaths from the drug, which can be fatal in small doses and is estimated to have killed 75,000 Americans by 2023.

“At the heart of this crisis is a complex global partnership that brings together America’s greatest geopolitical adversary and powerful transnational criminal organizations,” the researchers said.

Officials have often said that illicit fentanyl is made in Mexico using Chinese precursors and then smuggled across the border by drug cartels. It is often mixed with other drugs so that users do not know they are taking fentanyl.

The authors argue that while Mexico’s role in the crisis is well known, China’s moves are largely unknown.

“Indeed, unbeknownst to most Americans, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is actively financing, supporting, and promoting America’s deadliest drug threat in history. The combined forces of deadly Mexican drug cartels and hostile Chinese ambitions have left the United States with a destabilizing crisis and a death toll that each year exceeds the total number of American casualties from the Vietnam War,” they wrote.

They point to congressional reports showing that the CCP directly subsidizes the production and export of illicit fentanyl materials, and to a tax refund program that actually incentivizes the export of some fentanyl precursors. The authors argue that this undermines China’s claim that it cannot monitor the illicit activities of smugglers or track which manufacturers are exporting the contraband.

“It is also possible that China does not have full visibility into the specific volumes of precursor shipments because it does not deploy sufficient inspectors to its pharmaceutical chemical manufacturing industries,” they wrote.

The report concludes that chemicals are entering via air cargo, postal facilities and maritime routes. The authors also point to reports of an increased Chinese role in networks in Canada.

The Biden administration has taken a number of steps to address the fentanyl crisis, including expanding access to treatment and increasing funding and technology at ports of entry, where the bulk of fentanyl is seized. The report notes that the Treasury Department has sanctioned dozens of individuals and entities involved in smuggling and used diplomacy to pressure China to take tougher measures against suppliers.

However, the authors warned that these successes “are likely to ring hollow,” arguing that China has used negotiations in the past to extract other concessions from the US.

“Moreover, China’s announcements ‘do not impose substantial costs on (its) chemical industry,’ meaning that as long as suppliers can circumvent regulations — as has been documented for years — fentanyl precursor production will remain profitable,” they continued. “If previous patterns repeat, the Biden administration’s fentanyl diplomacy is unlikely to curb this deadly scourge.”

The report also criticizes what it calls “complicity” between corrupt Mexican officials and drug traffickers, and says the government has abandoned the pretext of taking on the cartels.

The report recommends that US strategy must accept that it “lacks good faith partners in both the Chinese and Mexican governments.” Instead, they argue, the US should ask US intelligence agencies to disclose Chinese involvement in the fentanyl trade, including increasing penalties for financial institutions.

They argue that the US should also facilitate the reshoring and nearshoring of China’s pharmaceutical supply chains to areas with a competitive advantage, while also working to expose Mexican “complicity” in the crisis.

“If the U.S. government continues to passively accept the fentanyl crisis as yet another illicit drug challenge and fails to stop the CCP from facilitating this deadly trade, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans are at risk of losing their lives,” the statements said.

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