The Biden administration announced sanctions against several Chinese firms and individuals on Tuesday, in what officials hailed as the latest step in their battle against the worst overdose disaster in U.S. history.
The actions include accusations against eight Chinese corporations suspected of marketing, producing, and selling precursor chemicals for synthetic opioids like fentanyl and methamphetamine. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, senior administration officials including Attorney General Merrick Garland and Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Mexico City for talks focused on the drug danger.
The Justice Department also accused 12 executives for their alleged participation in drug trafficking, whereas in a coordinated measure the Treasury Department announced sanctions on 28 foreign individuals and organizations, the majority of whom are located in China but also in Canada. These sanctions will lock out these individuals and organizations from the American financial system and forbid Americans from doing business with them.
“We are here today to deliver a message on behalf of the United States government. We know who is responsible for poisoning the American people with fentanyl,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters on Tuesday. “We know that this global fentanyl supply chain, which ends with the deaths of Americans, often starts with chemical companies in China.”
Agents from Homeland Security Investigations have snuck inside Chinese chemical firms that supply precursor chemicals to Mexican criminal organizations that produce and smuggle narcotics into the United States.
“Do they need fent?” a purported source in China allegedly asked a covert American agent before promising to transfer chemicals to Mexico, remarking that “all Mexico customers buy it”.
Liu Pengyu, a spokeswoman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, stated that China strongly disagreed with Tuesday’s action and that the Chinese government has always taken a tough position against drugs. “The U.S., however, in disregard of China’s goodwill, has been scapegoating China through the tactics of sanctioning, smear and slander. This has seriously eroded the foundation of China-U.S. cooperation on counter-narcotics,” Liu said.
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, Mexico and China are the main suppliers of fentanyl and drugs similar to it that are brought into the U.S.
Fentanyl precursors are used to create the potent synthetic opioid that has contributed to an increase in drug overdose deaths in the United States in recent years. Since 2020, opioid overdoses have been connected to more than 100,000 deaths annually, with fentanyl accounting for nearly two-thirds of them. More than ten times as many people have died from drugs now as there were in 1988, when the crack epidemic was at its worst.
Some chemical manufacturing firms were charged by U.S. authorities with smuggling fentanyl-making ingredients into the country via fictitious shipping labels and other covert methods. According to the prosecution, some shipments traveled to Mexico’s strong Sinaloa drug cartel.
During his visit to China in June, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Washington needed far more cooperation from Beijing to stop the supply of fentanyl and that the two sides had agreed to look into forming a working group on the subject. However, Chinese investigators have reportedly not cooperated in the latest investigation
