U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA): “Fentanyl is the single deadliest drug threat our nation has ever encountered.” According to DEA agents, the substance is mass-produced in Mexico using ingredients that are imported from China before being smuggled into the United States.
The United States accuses Mexico and China of not doing enough to stop the spread of fentanyl. Mexico and China contend that the rise in drug demand in the U.S. is the real cause of the issue.
In a letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping dated March 22, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador requested assistance in preventing the export of fentanyl. According to Reuters, in his letter, he said, “We come to you…not to beg for your backing in the face of these uncivil threats, but to urge that for humanitarian reasons, you help us regulate shipments of fentanyl that may be transferred from China to our nation.
According to the Guardian, Lopez Obrador continues to criticise the United States, claiming that “Unjustly, they are blaming us for problems that in large part have to do with their loss of values, their welfare crisis.”
Additionally, Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said that the fentanyl issue is “completely made in the U.S.” Ning suggested that the United States acknowledge its own issues and take more significant steps to improve domestic oversight and lower demand.
According to Reuters, China criticised U.S. sanctions on Monday (April 17), stating that the action “seriously undermines” global cooperation on illicit narcotics. Suzhou Xiaoli Pharmatech Co., Ltd. and Wuhan Shuokang Biological Technology Co., Ltd. were the two Chinese businesses that received sanctions.
After Beijing began stringently regulating fentanyl imports in 2018, the majority of the manufacture moved to Mexico. According to Axios, the U.S. asserts that Chinese traffickers are now exporting precursor chemicals, which Beijing insists it cannot stop since they are not prohibited in and of themselves.
In April 2022, Beijing officially ended its counter-narcotics cooperation with the United States as retaliation for Nancy Pelosi’s travel to Taiwan the previous year.
“China is equating the fentanyl problem and discussions with other entirely unrelated problems, like as [the] Taiwan problem. Anders Corr, publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, told the Epoch Times that one of the ways China responded against the United States during Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan was to halt talks on the fentanyl problem.
As ties between the United States and China deteriorate, the absence of cooperation between Mexico, China, and the United States is enabling fentanyl supply networks and drug trafficking to flourish.
