America’s Opioid Crisis has Nothing to do with “China”

Anyone who keeps a pulse on American conservative media will be familiar with the accusation commonly leveled by US Republican lawmakers and right-wing media pundits that “China is flooding the US with fentanyl”

Fox News has been pushing this narrative for at least the last two years, so I was surprised when I saw an ad for Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, put blame for the opioid Crisis on China. While the ad does not appear to be on YouTube a press release on her senate website similarly blames “China” for the fentanyl crisis.

Yesterday, Democrats and Republicans came together to [end the fentanyl crisis] and pass legislation to crack down on the chemical suppliers in China and drug cartels in Mexico that are fueling this epidemic,” said Senator Baldwin.

Anti-China sentiment runs stronger in Republican voters but is present in Democrats as well. Of course, both parties are responsible for the escalation of anti-China rhetoric. You may recall Hillary Clintons 2012 “pivot to Asia”, Donald Trump’s trade war, and Biden’s continuation and expansion of that trade war, especially with the latest batch of EV tariffs.

Opioid crisis

The Opioid Crisis is a huge problem in America affecting a wide range of racial, and income groups which has gotten especially bad lately according to latest available statistics.

The graph does not include 81,083 deaths in 2023 slightly down from 84,181 in 2022.

Although it is commonly known that the Sackler family run Purdue pharma largely and knowingly caused the opioid crisis and received no prison time for it, the US media has somehow managed to shift at least some of the popular outrage from this crisis onto China. However, there is no evidence that the CPC is knowingly or purposefully contributing to the US opioid epidemic.

Scope and Scale of Illegal Activity

That being said, there is at least some level criminal activity between China, the US and Mexico when it comes to illicitly traded fentanyl and its precursors that skirts around authority.

Referencing the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and Customs Border Protection (CBP) fentanyl seizure statistics reveals nothing significant. The total amount of fentanyl seized by the DEA in 2023 was 12,000lbs. The same year CBP seized almost 24,000lbs of illicit fentanyl coming through the US southern border and only 255lbs from other entry points. The amount of fentanyl seized from shipments directly from China was a mere 12lbs.

What the US media and think tanks technically accuse China of, however,  is providing precursor chemicals to fentanyl which is then smuggled through the US’s southern border. Although the “precursor” part is often dropped. While it is true that China is the leading producer of precursor chemicals to Fentanyl, this is hardly surprising given that China is responsible for 44% of global chemical production. It would be surprising if these chemicals were mostly sourced elsewhere. Most of these chemicals, including fentanyl itself, have legitimate medical uses and are permitted in some capacity with strict controls.

Recently the US government sanctioned 12 entities and 13 individuals in China.  The individuals and entities mentioned skirted US and Chinese authorities selling fentanyl and other precursor chemicals to illicit drug dealers in Mexico. This brings the total number of Chinese entities sanctioned for illicit fentanyl trade to a mere 65.

The argument that China is “flooding” the US with fentanyl should then be reduced to:” China is flooding the US with fentanyl by supplying its precursors to bad actors in Mexico.” However this type of rhetoric would still imply that China has not done enough to comply with US the export controls and/or not has not been cooperative enough with US drug enforcement. Even this watered-down accusation is an exaggeration and ignores how this issue intersects with geopolitics.

Chinese Involvement

In May 2019 in response to demands from then president Donald Trump, China committed to scheduling and controlling fentanyl.

From the same report:

According to David Prince, deputy assistant director of transnational organized crime at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), China’s scheduling has led to a decline in the number of Chinese manufacturers “willing to sell/export [finished] fentanyl products.

The report later states:

China has also complied with U.S. requests to better regulate its shipping and postal networks. In 2018, Congress passed the Synthetics Trafficking and Overdose Prevention (STOP) Act, which required the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to receive Advanced Electronic Data (AED) on 100 percent of inbound package shipments from China by December 31, 2018, and 100 percent from all other international shipments by December 31, 2020.  AEDs provide basic information about the shipper, the recipient, and package content—information used by postal authorities to monitor potentially harmful or illicit content. According to Gary Barksdale, the chief postal inspector of USPS, China’s compliance with the STOP Act and USPS’s AED requirements has improved from 32 percent in October 2017 to 85 percent in May 2019—short of the 100 percent threshold but well above the average international AED compliance score, which was 54 percent as of October 2020.

Though China’s AED compliance is high, the country is also the largest source of packages coming to the United States.

At this point it appeared to be smooth sailing, as China was fully on board with US in stopping the illicit fentanyl trade. The “China is flooding the US with fentanyl” narrative did not exist at this point. This however changed when on August 2^nd 2022 then US House speaker Nancy Pelosi provocatively took a trip to Taiwan against the PRC’s wishes. For the record, as of 1979, the US does not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country. In response, the CPC suspended counter-narcotics and law enforcement cooperation with the US. Even western think tanks and media admit this was in response to Pelosi’s aggressive actions.

Around this time is when the China-fentanyl narrative began to take hold as evidenced by the bevy of articles published on conservative media around this time that accused China of “flooding” the US with fentanyl. Absent from these narratives was the geopolitical context of the US making moves to deliberately provoke China and the impressive degree the CPC was willing to comply before that.

Recently as tensions have cooled again as in early 2024 the Biden administration lifted sanctions on the Institute of Forensic Science and resumed more regular cooperation with the CPC on illicit drug and precursor chemical control.

This past week even, the US and China agreed to drug control coordination between scientists and even worked together to detain an actor involved in illegal drug trade. Good things happen when the US stops playing silly games and works with China to suppress the illicit narcotics trade. Doing so is important for preventing opioid overdoses in the US and abroad.

Conclusion

While China is the leading supplier of precursor chemicals used in fentanyl production. The size of the illicit fentanyl trade from China to the US is negligibly small and the CPC is more than willing to comply with US demands on chemical export controls provided the US does not try to deliberately sabotage diplomatic relations.

Blaming “China” for the opioid crisis is not fair or accurate. It would be equivalent to blaming leading metals exporting countries like the DRC for US mass shootings.