(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed that the U.S. government should reach out to China for assistance in the fentanyl crisis, after revealing that Chinese companies accidentally shipped to cartels the very chemicals needed make fentanyl.
Blinken made the comments during an interview with CBS News, after his visit to China, when asked about the situation with the Eastern power and what he thought about their promise to stop producing fentanyl, according to Breitbart.
Blinken said that China’s domestic production of fentanyl dropped drastically in recent years, after the government put the drug on a prohibited list.
However, he also admitted that since the prohibition of the drug in China, many Chinese manufacturers moved the chemicals and production equipment to Mexico, increasing trafficking in the U.S.
“Part of the challenge is making sure that chemical manufacturers that are producing these precursors in China and then, in some cases, inadvertently sending it to the wrong people in Mexico or other places, sometimes intentionally, deliberately, that’s what’s got to stop,” he explained.
Blinken also expressed hope that the U.S. and China could cooperate to address the problem.
“It’s not about pointing fingers,” he said. “It’s simply finding a way to cooperate.”
He also refused to address the problem as a potentially deliberate act on China’s part, despite the recent discovery that China is selling fentanyl manufacturing equipment to Mexican cartels.
“The pill presses that are used to press that finished fentanyl into pills are coming in from China exclusively,” said assistant director to DHS’s Homeland Security Investigations, Matthew Millhollin. “We just seized over 200 pill presses at a warehouse in Los Angeles. This came in directly from China. This problem begins and ends in China.”
The Drug Enforcement Administration seized more than 379 million doses of fentanyl in 2022—enough to kill every American citizen.
“Just two milligrams of fentanyl, the small amount that fits on the tip of a pencil, is considered a potentially deadly dose,” according to DEA administrator Anne Milgram.
