Lost in all this is this bit of stupidity: over what the president said was China’s failure to stop fentanyl-related chemicals from reaching the United States
Do you want to know how that actually works? Because it is astonishingly stupid. Here's the DEA explaining it: https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-03/DEA_GOV_DIR-008-20%20Fentanyl%20Flow%20in%20the%20United%20States_0.pdf
So, there a dozen different precursor chemicals for fentanyl, including a lot with legitimate medical uses.
China makes those chemicals, and ships them either to Mexican labs, or hilariously, to the US, where they then smuggled out to Mexican labs. (Yes, they are mailing drug precursors into the US, and then having to smuggle them _out_.) They are then turned into fentanyl, and smuggled back into the US, almost entirely though legitimate ports of entry with specially built vehicles using professional couriers , the majority of which are probably US citizens at this point.
You'll notice that China is barely involved in this, and moreover, their role is completely replaceable. In fact, India has already started to replace it. And by 'already started', I mean the DEA link there is explaining how they had started back in 2018. In fact, they may have already moved somewhere else besides India.
Fentanyl is sorta the ultimate logical conclusion of the drug war: A substance so potent that it has incredible bang for the buck (And thus incredibly easy to accidentally overdose on) and is made from precursors that even smaller. This is, literally, an unwinnable fight.
The best we can possible do is stop the _Mexican_ labs from turning the precursors into the real thing, which would be incredibly hard. That would require wrestling control of parts of Mexico away from the drug cartels (Which neither us or the Mexican government has been able to do for decades) or locking the border down almost completely to _legitimate_ travel. At which point the drug network would just switch to the illegal side and start using that. (Which it doesn't do now because people trying to sneak into the US for jobs and disappearing into 'somewhere in the US where they can get a job' are rather less trustworthy than American citizens in San Diego that makes a trip every Sunday and takes a standard cut and they can show up at the house of and break their legs if the drugs go missing.) So we have to lock _that_ down, also. We're like three impossible things deep at this point.
And that will just mean we start running the labs here. Which, as all the meth labs demonstrate, we are certainly willing to do. And we will do very poorly, making even more erratic quality, killing even more people.
There really is not, in any manner, a solution here. Drugs have won the drug war.
The thing we need to start thinking about is the thing we _should_ have been thinking about decades ago: Reducing the circumstances, both economic and social, where people turn to hard drugs, providing a place for them to be safe, providing _softer_ drugs so they don't go 'all the way', and providing a way back.
Because what we cannot do is magically stop them from having access if they want them.
The commenter archive features may be temporarily disabled at times.
Lost in all this is this bit of stupidity: over what the president said was China’s failure to stop fentanyl-related chemicals from reaching the United States
Do you want to know how that actually works? Because it is astonishingly stupid. Here's the DEA explaining it: https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-03/DEA_GOV_DIR-008-20%20Fentanyl%20Flow%20in%20the%20United%20States_0.pdf
So, there a dozen different precursor chemicals for fentanyl, including a lot with legitimate medical uses.
China makes those chemicals, and ships them either to Mexican labs, or hilariously, to the US, where they then smuggled out to Mexican labs. (Yes, they are mailing drug precursors into the US, and then having to smuggle them _out_.) They are then turned into fentanyl, and smuggled back into the US, almost entirely though legitimate ports of entry with specially built vehicles using professional couriers , the majority of which are probably US citizens at this point.
You'll notice that China is barely involved in this, and moreover, their role is completely replaceable. In fact, India has already started to replace it. And by 'already started', I mean the DEA link there is explaining how they had started back in 2018. In fact, they may have already moved somewhere else besides India.
Fentanyl is sorta the ultimate logical conclusion of the drug war: A substance so potent that it has incredible bang for the buck (And thus incredibly easy to accidentally overdose on) and is made from precursors that even smaller. This is, literally, an unwinnable fight.
The best we can possible do is stop the _Mexican_ labs from turning the precursors into the real thing, which would be incredibly hard. That would require wrestling control of parts of Mexico away from the drug cartels (Which neither us or the Mexican government has been able to do for decades) or locking the border down almost completely to _legitimate_ travel. At which point the drug network would just switch to the illegal side and start using that. (Which it doesn't do now because people trying to sneak into the US for jobs and disappearing into 'somewhere in the US where they can get a job' are rather less trustworthy than American citizens in San Diego that makes a trip every Sunday and takes a standard cut and they can show up at the house of and break their legs if the drugs go missing.) So we have to lock _that_ down, also. We're like three impossible things deep at this point.
And that will just mean we start running the labs here. Which, as all the meth labs demonstrate, we are certainly willing to do. And we will do very poorly, making even more erratic quality, killing even more people.
There really is not, in any manner, a solution here. Drugs have won the drug war.
The thing we need to start thinking about is the thing we _should_ have been thinking about decades ago: Reducing the circumstances, both economic and social, where people turn to hard drugs, providing a place for them to be safe, providing _softer_ drugs so they don't go 'all the way', and providing a way back.
Because what we cannot do is magically stop them from having access if they want them.