Heritage Foundation report reveals China 'actively funding, supporting, and pushing' fentanyl into U.S. cities

WASHINGTON, DC - A report from The Heritage Foundation released Tuesday entitled "Holding China and Mexico Accountable for America’s Fentanyl Crisis" established in direct terms that the enormous death toll linked to fentanyl, estimated at 75,000 Americans, is the result of operations actively funded and supported by the Chinese Communist Party.

As reported by Fox News, Andrés Martínez-Fernández and Andrew J. Harding writing for Heritage said, "At the heart of this crisis is an intricate global partnership bringing together America’s top geopolitical adversary and powerful transnational criminal organizations."

They observed that while U.S. officials have acknowledged that illegal fentanyl is manufactured in Mexico using Chinese chemical precursors the drug is also fatally laced into other illicit drugs. 
 

🚨NEW: China—not Mexico—is the driving force behind America's fentanyl crisis. @Heritage's @AndresMartFern and @AJ_Harding1 examine the CPP's latest offensive against America in a new report: https://t.co/4lVDfxoZ8N

— Matthew Tragesser (@MatthewTrag) September 9, 2024

Martínez-Fernández and Harding state that while Mexico's complicity in these deaths are well-known, China's is not.

They wrote, "Indeed, unknown to most Americans, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is actively funding, supporting, and pushing America’s most deadly drug threat in history. The combined forces of deadly Mexican drug cartels and hostile Chinese ambitions have delivered to the United States a destabilizing crisis and a death toll that each year eclipses the total of U.S. casualties from the Vietnam War.

"At the heart of this crisis is an intricate global partnership bringing together America’s top geopolitical adversary and powerful transnational criminal organizations."

A House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party found in a 2024 report cited by Heritage that the Chinese Communist Party "directly subsidizes the manufacturing and export of illicit fentanyl materials and other synthetic narcotics.” In particular, the report noted, "PRC chemical companies provide over 80% of methamphetamine precursors for cartels."

Martínez-Fernández and Harding offered a stark warning to the American people saying, "If the U.S. government continues to passively accept the fentanyl crisis as simply another illicit drug challenge and fails to prevent the CCP from facilitating this deadly trade, hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of Americans are at risk of losing their lives."