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Why America Is Struggling to Stop the Fentanyl Epidemic

The New Geopolitics of Synthetic Opioids

By Mark XavierPublished 10 months ago 4 min read
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the United States is suffering the deadliest drug epidemic in its history. Overdoses claimed the lives of more than 100,000 Americans between August 2021 and August 2022 alone. Over the span of just a few years, drug deaths have doubled. Most of these overdoses involve fentanyl, which now kills around 200 Americans every day.

To address the crisis, the U.S. government is not only deploying law enforcement to crack down on fentanyl dealers but also taking steps to prevent and treat substance use and the harms it produces. But the continued growth of the fentanyl epidemic makes clear that these measures are not enough. Since all fentanyl used in the United States is produced abroad, stemming the flow of the drug into the country is essential as well.

So far, such supply-side efforts have run aground. For one thing, synthetic opioids such as fentanyl can be produced from a wide array of chemicals, many of which also have legitimate commercial uses. That means restricting the supply of these chemicals is difficult and impractical. What is more, when regulators ban or restrict synthetic opioids or their ingredients, producers simply tweak their recipes.

Less talked about, but just as consequential, are the geopolitical obstacles that make it so hard for the U.S. government to plug the supply channels. Most of the world’s fentanyl and its precursor chemicals come from China or Mexico, countries whose current policies and priorities make effective control of fentanyl production very difficult. U.S. law enforcement cooperation with China, which was limited to begin with, has in recent years collapsed altogether. Absent a reset in U.S.-Chinese relations, that is unlikely to change. The Mexican government, too, has eviscerated law enforcement cooperation with the United States. Although a series of high-level bilateral meetings in April may have opened a path to increased cooperation down the line, it is far from clear if they will lead to substantive action from Mexican authorities.

But there is much more that the Biden administration can do. Washington still has unexplored options at its disposal to induce stronger cooperation from Chinese and Mexican authorities, for instance by combining constructive proposals with the threat of sanctions against state and private actors in those countries. It can also adopt additional intelligence and law enforcement measures of its own, with or without foreign cooperation. It is high time that Washington takes action on this front. If it does not, the record death rates that fentanyl is causing today will be eclipsed by even higher ones tomorrow.

MADE IN CHINA

U.S. officials have long understood that cutting off fentanyl production at its source means cutting it off in China. Since 2015, they have pushed Beijing to tighten controls on fentanyl-class drugs and to get serious about enforcing them. Initially, those efforts seemed to bear fruit. In 2019, China began to place restrictions on the entire class of synthetic opioids, and it has since extended those laws to the main precursor chemicals used in synthetic opioid production. For a while, the United States and China even worked together on a drug busts. In 2019, Chinese authorities in Hebei Province used U.S. intelligence to arrest and convict nine traffickers for mailing fentanyl straight to consumers and dealers in the United States.

Since then, however, Chinese traffickers have evaded controls by rerouting their operations through Mexico. Unlike drugs such as methamphetamine, which remain firmly in the hands of Chinese organized crime syndicates, the production chain for fentanyl often starts with small and middle-level players in the country’s chemical and pharmaceutical industries, including the odd mom-and-pop outfit. These seemingly legitimate businesses ship fentanyl precursors to Chinese or Mexican drug cartels. The cartels synthesize the chemicals into finished fentanyl and then move it onto the U.S. market.

It is hard for outsiders to get a clear view of the current state of China’s domestic drug enforcement. But there have been no high-profile Chinese prosecutions since the 2019 trial in Hebei; neither does Beijing appear to be doing anything to stem the flow of precursor chemicals to Mexican cartels. This inaction is no accident. The arrests in Hebei took place when Beijing still hoped for a broader thaw in relations with Washington. As that hope has eroded, so has China’s willingness to coordinate with U.S. authorities on the opioid front.

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Mark Xavier

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