The Fentanyl Attack

With all the reporting on the fentanyl crisis, a question has been growing in my mind: Why would a drug cartel want to kill off its customers? For that is exactly what is happening with fentanyl.

The answer may be the drug cartels do not want to kill off their customers, but another agency wants to kill Americans.  A report from the Commission of Combatting Synthetic Opioid Trafficking has a few nuggets:

Mexico is the principal source of this illicit fentanyl and its analogues today.* In Mexico, cartels manufacture these poisons in clandestine laboratories with ingredients—precursor chemicals—sourced largely from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). (p x)

Since 2014, when illegal synthetic opioids began their rapid expansion in the United States, their source has evolved. From about 2014 until 2019, 70 to 80 percent of the pure fentanyl and fentanyl analogues that federal authorities seized came from foreign suppliers in the PRC. They relied on the internet to sell their drugs and on the international mail and parcel delivery systems to ship their products to the United States. (p xi)

Of deepest concern is that most consumers are not—at least initially—seeking fentanyl specifically. Rather, it is being laced into heroin or manufactured as counterfeit tablets, including such brand names as OxyContin, Percocet, Vicodin, Adderall, and Xanax, driving overdose deaths. (p xii)

These synthetic opioid alternatives became available for purchase online from new producers, mostly in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), who had not previously been involved in drug trafficking in the United States. Mexican transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) also increasingly began supplying fentanyl instead of traditional plant-based opiates, such as heroin, albeit often producing it using precursor chemicals supplied by sellers in the PRC.* (pp 2-3)

Additionally, the central government of the PRC has prioritized biopharmaceuticals as one of ten key sectors in the Made in China 2025 initiative.5 Because of the large size and high value of these industries, with firms entering and exiting the market, a small number of unscrupulous firms could hide out in the open. The government of the PRC
has a vested interest in allowing the industry to operate with little oversight or  enforcement of regulations. (p 8)

Perhaps the answer is the Mexican cartels may not want their customers dead, but the PRC may want to kill Americans and sow chaos.

The report that Adderall may contain fentanyl is especially disturbing. Adderall is used to treat ADHD and is often used to treat children. Doctors are now using Adderall in children as yound as three. The explosive use of Adderall is disturbing. The DreamCenter for recovery report on Adderall states:

These detractors maintain that ADHD is a way to control children rather than deal with the underlying issues of why they are bored in school and is more cost effective and easier than dealing with societal issues that have lead to hyperactivity among today’s youth.

The evidence that this may be true is fairly overwhelming and today 6.4 million children in the United States have been diagnosed with ADHD, which is a 42% increase over the past 8 years.

Since the average diagnosis age for ADHD is 7 years old, this means that the majority of children throughout their formative years will be medicated with a powerful narcotic that can affect them in profound ways in the future.

The epidemic use of Adderall is worrisome enough. But Adderall laced with fentanyl is a chilling thought.

At what point does the intentional killing of Americans and the enslavement of their minds become an act of war? At what point does a health crisis become a national security crisis?

How much of the fentanyl is coming across the border in the deluge of illegal migrants? How many cartel members are coming as well? At what point does turning a blind eye to this situation or even facilitating it become something chargeable under RICO?