(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China, released a statement claiming that China was “not contributing” to the rising rates of fentanyl entering the United States, despite strong evidence to the contrary.
According to the Daily Caller, the State Department called out the Chinese Communist Party for acting as a supplier of chemicals and mass-manufacturing equipment for Mexican drug cartels.
Burns’s statement deflected the blame from the CCP to private entities more directly involved in pushing the drug epidemic.
“Can we work on the fentanyl problem?” Burns asked while listing some of the most critical aspects of the U.S.–China relationship.
“The government here in Beijing is not contributing to that problem,” he continued. “But black-market Chinese firms are, and they’re shipping illicit precursor chemicals to the drug cartels in Mexico and Central America that make the fentanyl that poisons and often kills Americans,” he added.
More than 70,000 Americans died in fentanyl-related incidents in 2021, skyrocketing from 57,000 in 2020.
Instead of addressing the more controllable and immediate border crisis, the Biden administration called on the CCP to control the exportation of the deadly chemicals used to create fentanyl. The State Department indicated that China showed little interest in cracking down on the market.
Vedant Patel, the State Department’s principal deputy spokesman, said that despite China’s seeming unwillingness to cooperate, they will continue to make attempts to work with them on the issue.
Meanwhile, the so-called progressive members of the Democrats’ radical left fringe have embraced the country’s cottage opiod industry.
The state of Washington decriminalized possession of the drug, along with meth and heroin, downgrading possession from a felony to a misdemeanor.
Fentanyl is often mixed with other drugs, such as xylazine—a drug commonly used to tranquilize animals by veterinarians.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that more than 107,000 people died from overdoses in 2022. Death by drug overdose is an increasing issue in the U.S.; before 2020, rates never topped 100,000.
Fentanyl and other opioids caused the majority of the deaths, according to the study.
