U.S. Fentanyl Epidemic

Written in November of 2023

According to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), China remains the primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked into the United States. While China has banned the sale of fentanyl (2019), Chinese vendors have continued to make and ship fentanyl analogs and precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl by exploiting loopholes in chemical restrictions and disguising their activities. These precursors are still being shipped to customers in the United States and to Mexican cartels who then make it in our local communities or ship them over the border.

Conveniently, China has either declined to pursue such behavior within their own country or has actively allowed the activity to continue. Either way a competent and logical response should be made to address these concerns.

If we cannot trust China to respond to this epidemic, we must do more domestically to prevent it from coming across our border. There are most certainly options, which would involve DHS Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) techniques in Autonomous Unmanned Vehicles or implementing policy changes within U.S. Customs and Border Protection at ports of entry to implement stricter inspections of packages coming from Mexico. Fentanyl and other drugs are being bought from social media apps like Snapchat – having legislative requirements for these social media apps to implement security features to deter the selling of these drugs can also be considered. Some may consider this extreme, but when in you have approximately 53,000 (2020), 67,300 (2021), and 73,500 (2022) deaths just in the United States, something extreme needs to be done. We cannot expect China to respond when we can’t even trust them from stealing our technology from us.