On Thursday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) urged Beijing to curb the flow of precursor chemicals into Mexico, which are used by drug cartels to produce fentanyl.
“China is not doing enough to halt the stream of chemicals that Mexican drug cartels use to produce fentanyl, the destructive drug that has supercharged the opioid crisis raging in communities across America,” Whitehouse stated.
They urged China to tighten the enforcement of agreements for the proper labeling of overseas shipments and to implement customer due diligence standards to prevent such chemicals from being illegally diverted.
More than 72,000 Americans died from fentanyl-related overdoses in 2021, the senators said, citing data from the CDC. They claimed that Mexican cartels sourced precursor chemicals from China.
Grassley said it was an “evil scheme” on the part of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to allow the shipment of precursor chemicals since the CCP “knows full well” that its chemicals are being used by Mexican cartels to poison Americans.
US Sanctions 2 Chinese Firms, 5 Individuals
Last month, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned two Chinese entities and five individuals based in China and Guatemala for allegedly supplying precursor chemicals to drug cartels in Mexico for U.S.-bound fentanyl production.The sanctions targeted China-based chemical firms Wuhan Shuokang Biological Technology and Suzhou Xiaoli Pharmatech, as well as four Chinese nationals and a Guatamela-based broker of fentanyl precursor chemicals.
“Treasury, as part of the whole-of-government effort to respond to this crisis, will continue to vigorously apply our tools to prevent the transfer of precursor chemicals and machinery necessary to produce this drug,” the department stated.
Mexico and the United States agreed on April 13 to ramp up the fight against fentanyl trafficking, as well as drug cartels and their supply chains, in a joint bid to reduce consumption of the powerful opioid.
Both countries have asked China to curb the shipment of precursor chemicals to prevent the production of fentanyl.
“That’s our goal,” Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said in a video released by his office, without mentioning the origin of these chemicals.
Last year, Anders Corr, the publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, said that China played a key role in flooding America with fentanyl, and the regime is now weaponizing the drug issue against the United States.“China is linking the fentanyl issue and negotiations with other totally different issues like [the] Taiwan issue. So when Pelosi visited Taiwan, one of the ways in which China retaliated against the United States was to cease negotiations over the fentanyl issue,” Corr told NTD, a sister media outlet of The Epoch Times.
Corr said there are labs in China producing precursor chemicals, but that “China has not done what it needs to do to shut down these labs, that they have to shut down the precursor trade.”
“The Biden administration is trying to negotiate with them to make changes to get more controls on the precursor chemicals that are used in fentanyl. And China just isn’t budging,” Corr said.
