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DEA's Fentanyl Flow to the United States (pdf) https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-03/DEA_GOV_DIR-008-20%20Fentanyl%20Flow%20in%20the%20United%20State

• tristor 4y ago
  Yeah, it's an open secret nobody wants to ever talk about in these threads. The fentanyl problems in the United States are essentially a direct social attack by the Chinese on the US. It's basically intentional in every way that matters.
  • jandrese 4y ago
    What's crazy is that the big government solution to this was to build a wall at the US-Mexico border.
    • misssocrates 4y ago
      What should they do?
      • jay_kyburz 4y ago
        I've been sitting here reading this whole thread wondering the same thing. I don't really know how I would go about it, but I think the only solution is to make people not want to turn to the drugs in the first place. Make poor people less poor? Make people feel better about their lives and prospects? I guess I would spend a heap of money working out what makes people turn to the drugs and try and help them solve those problems some other way.
        • nradov 4y ago
          Many young people are dying of accidental fentanyl poisoning because they get counterfeit sleeping pills or whatever from their friends. Sure we should absolutely reduce the factors that cause people to turn to drugs. But some people are always going to have insomnia. Some people are always going to want to alter their mental state. https://peterattiamd.com/anthonyhipolito/ https://peterattiamd.com/anthonyhipolito/
          • herbst 4y ago
            I've taken drugs my whole adult live and never witnessed a faulty product except badly grown weed. There are rules for safe drug use. There are test kits (today, back then they were expensive) and most countries gladly have drug checking places as well. The issue aren't the drugs but the culture and knowledge around it.
            • shapefrog 4y ago
              15 year olds are not going to go to some narc in a suit to check if the smart pills they bought on tiktok are legit or not.
              • herbst 4y ago
                Not sure how drug checkings looks where you are but this is exactly what 15yo me and his peers did.
            • nradov 4y ago
              Your personal experience is meaningless. Mexican drug cartels are literally producing faulty product today. Watch the interview that I linked above. Counterfeit prescription pills randomly contain fatal doses of fentanyl due to poor quality control. There is no "culture" here. It's just some kid getting a pill from a friend at school. They're not going to check it for safety.
        • riversflow 4y ago
          My modest proposal is to make drugs OTC for adults. Regulate the supply and most of the problems disappear. The war on drugs has failed, we need to abandon it in the west. People want to get high, not die. Give them the ability to manage their addiction with dignity and safety.
        • speakfreely 4y ago
          > Make poor people less poor? Make people feel better about their lives and prospects? I think those are two unrelated issues. There's many places in the world where people have substantially less than in the US but have much higher life satisfaction and extremely lower rates of drug addiction.
    • google234123 4y ago
      Mexican drug cartels are leading suppliers of cocaine, heroin, meth...
      • Hilarity1 4y ago
        Big business will not be stopped by a wall.
      • TheHypnotist 4y ago
        There is no wall high enough to even make those things pause for a second.
  • matthew9219 4y ago
    From the reference you replied to: > Effective May 1, 2019, China officially controlled all forms of fentanyl as a class of drugs. This fulfilled the commitment that President Xi made during the G-20 Summit. The implementation of the new measure includes investigations of known fentanyl manufacturing areas, stricter control of internet sites advertising fentanyl, stricter enforcement of shipping regulations, and the creation of special teams to investigate leads on fentanyl trafficking. These new restrictions have the potential to severely limit fentanyl production and trafficking from China. This could alter China’s position as a supplier to both the United States and Mexico
    • voakbasda 4y ago
      Given that the US and China are effectively engaged in a cold war, this "commitment" means virtually nothing. Sure, all commercial production and distribution may have been restricted, but I would bet that would not stop their military or intelligence organizations from continuing to engage in this form of social warfare. The CIA has done much worse with less at stake.
      • stainablesteel 4y ago
        agreed, their lack of commitment in stopping any kind of ransomware attacks that come out of china speaks the same sentiment
  • wesleywt 4y ago
    No. The opioid crisis is completely manufactured in the USA by US drug companies such as Purdue Pharma. China is just profiting off it. Your xenophobic conspiracy theory is laughable.
  • rippercushions 4y ago
    You don't need to invoke conspiracy theories here: the trade is vastly profitable and that's what's driving it. If China cracks down (in reality, not just on paper), production will just shift to India or Vietnam or wherever. For what it's worth, China as a whole (both the people and the government) remember the Opium Wars quite well and are thus strongly anti-drug: stats are thin on the ground, but by all accounts drug offenses are the top reason for the death penalty. Of course, it only take a few factories to churn out vast quantities of the stuff, and the profits are sufficient to lubricate any officials who might otherwise object.
• runnerup 4y ago
  This report is a bit old. Since then, China no longer manufactures fentanyl (for the most part), and does not ship fentanyl precursors to the USA. So the flows look much different now. The precursors are shipped to Mexico, where fentanyl is produced in small labs, often trained by Chinese associates, and then shipped to the USA.
  • tristor 4y ago
    > produced in small labs, often trained by Chinese associates, and then shipped to the USA. Same thing, more steps, more plausible deniability. What's the diff?
    • runnerup 4y ago
      Well for one, if China stops supplying Mexico, and the USA stops all illicit deliveries of anything from China… That won’t solve our problem because Mexico will buy chemical precursors from Brazil, India, or any of the large chemical companies in Mexico. The labs are already there (invested capital) and the chemicals (marginal costs) aren’t specialized. So the “solution” has changed if you want prohibition. I mean, we’ve tried prohibition for 70+ years now. It doesn’t work. But we can keep trying!
      • rootusrootus 4y ago
        > So the “solution” has changed if you want prohibition. I mean, we’ve tried prohibition for 70+ years now. It doesn’t work. But we can keep trying! I'm not sure that our dabbling with legalization is a panacea either. Maybe we should aggressively try both at the same time. Extremely harsh punishment for dealers, decriminalization for users, well funded treatment for anybody who wants it.
        • telotortium 4y ago
          I think the only solution is for the US to conquer the other half of Mexico that it didn't annex in the 19th century. Feasibility: uncertain.