The following detailed report to members of DrugWatch International was produced by John Coleman, President of the Board of Directors.
Dear friends,
Yesterday, April 16, 2024, the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, a committee comprised of members of the House of Representatives that describes itself as “committed to working on a bipartisan basis to build consensus on the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party and develop a plan of action to defend the American people, our economy, and our values,” issued a 64-page report titled, “The CCP’s Role in the Fentanyl Crisis.”
I’ve attached a copy of the report.
Among the Committee’s findings are the following:
The PRC government, under the control of the CCP:
- Directly subsidizes the manufacturing and export of illicit fentanyl materials and other synthetic narcotics through tax rebates.
- Gave monetary grants and awards to companies openly trafficking illicit fentanyl materials and other synthetic narcotics.
- Holds ownership interest in several PRC companies tied to drug trafficking.
- Fails to prosecute fentanyl and precursor manufacturers.
- Allows the open sale of fentanyl precursors and other illicit materials on the extensively monitored and controlled PRC internet.
- Censors content about domestic drug sales but leaves export-focused narcotics content untouched.
- Strategically and economically benefits from the fentanyl crisis.
No one reading this email should be surprised about any of these findings as they have been known and written about in books and scholarly papers for years. That said, having the imprimatur of a congressional committee is important and may help to move the ball closer to the goalpost.
Regrettably, Mike Gallagher, the Committee’s chairman and a four-term Representative of Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District, has surprisingly and suddenly decided to resign from Congress. In two days, on April 19, 2024, Gallagher will leave his job in Congress to join Palantir Technologies Inc., a global software company serving the analytic needs of the intelligence community. It was founded by billionaire and conservative activist Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and several other highly successful companies.
The Committee’s report provides the reasoning and grounds to support the findings mentioned above. None of it should be surprising because all of it has been known for decades. The Committee is to be commended for putting this material together in one comprehensive and relatively brief document.
Ironically, the Committee’s report may be more important not for what it says or suggests but, instead, for what it ignores and fails to address.
At the conclusion of the report’s Executive Summary is a list of recommendations:
- Establish a Joint Task Force – Counter Opioids (JTF-CO) that concentrates all non-military elements of state power and executes a coordinated strategy to target the weak points in the global illicit fentanyl supply chain.
- Provide law enforcement and intelligence officials with the statutory authorities, tools, and resources they need to execute their responsibilities, including through enhancing international law enforcement cooperation, appropriately prioritizing fentanyl and antimony laundering in intelligence and enforcement efforts; and recruiting and retaining top talent to combat the fentanyl threat.
- Strengthen U.S. sanctions authorities and use those authorities in an aggressive and coordinated manner against entities involved in the fentanyl trade.
- Enact and use trade and customs enforcement measures to restrict fentanyl trafficking.
- Close regulatory and enforcement gaps exploited by PRC money launderers and fentanyl traffickers.
These recommendations are what we used to call “blue sky” proposals, ideas that one would like to see implemented, assuming ceteris paribus – if all other relevant things remain unaltered. The “real” world, however, is a dynamic cesspool of interests that makes folly of most, if not all, of these recommendations.
I’m reminded of the late Janet Reno who, when she was Attorney General, would give very nice speeches about what the government needed to do to reduce crime. For some reason, it never dawned on Reno that she was the government and could indeed do or attempt to do what she was demanding to be done by the government.
It’s the same here. The Committee could have proposed and even presented legislation to accomplish some of its recommendations but decided not to do so. In addition, the conditions described in the Committee’s report did not occur spontaneously but were allowed to develop incrementally over time. Why?
When recommendations like these are simply reported-out without assignment, they go unnoticed by the organs of government empowered to act on them. Indeed, a closer reading of these recommendations might suggest that some have already been tried – as described, or with modest modifications.
Let’s look at the scoreboard. The 2016 National Drug Control Strategy presented to Congress by President Barack Obama said this about China’s role in the drug trade:
China remains the source of many raw chemical compounds used to manufacture NPS. The United States and China have intensified cooperation between law enforcement agencies through enhanced intelligence exchanges, increased cooperation on investigations, and a series of technical exchanges on precursor chemicals, NPS, and related topics. On October 1, 2015, China placed 116 chemicals – primarily NPS – under national control. This action is expected to have a significant impact on the export of NPS products to the United States.
[…]
Fentanyl used for illicit purposes comes from several sources including pharmaceutical fentanyl diverted from legal medical use, which accounts for a small percentage of the fentanyl in the illicit market, and clandestine fentanyl that is manufactured in Mexico or China and smuggled into the United States through a variety of means. Fentanyl is extremely dangerous and deadly. Between 2013 and 2014, at least 700 deaths in the United States were attributed to fentanyl and its analogues, although the actual number is likely higher. [internal references omitted]
The number of fentanyl deaths – noted here as 700 between 2013 and 2014 – has risen more than tenfold to 73,000, according to yesterday’s congressional report. Despite this, our National Drug Control Strategies, regardless of which administration is in power, call for little more than assessing the problem and its impact on our nation, pointing the finger at China, but doing little else.
Our latest 2022 National Drug Control Strategy updates this insouciance with the following stated principle that could have been copied and pasted from just about any earlier strategy in the last 20 years:
- Work with the PRC to strengthen control of the production, diversion, and transshipment of illicit synthetic drugs and their precursors. (Agencies Involved: DHS; DOD; DOJ; DOS; HHS; IC/NSC; Treasury; USAID; USPIS)
A significant volume of non-fentanyl opioids and precursor chemicals used to produce fentanyl, fentanyl analogues, and other synthetic drugs originate in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This assessment is supported by seizure evidence, law enforcement investigations, internet sales information, and judicial actions in the United States, PRC, and Mexico. Increased collaboration with the PRC on shared drug priorities can disrupt drug trafficking networks, along with the corrupt or compromised systems that support them, and reduce the availability of dangerous synthetic drugs in the United States. The United States will continue engagement with the PRC to reduce diversion of uncontrolled precursor chemicals to the illicit production and trafficking of synthetic drugs destined for markets in the United States, while also working with impacted third countries
Yesterday’s congressional report, like all the ONDCP National Drug Control Strategy reports for the past quarter century, does little but describe the problem and provide hand-wringing solutions tied to increased cooperation and international square-dancing. Do you think that Mike Gallagher is leaving Congress because he knows this? Gallagher’s exit remains a mystery. A former combat Marine who served in Iraq, and a graduate of Princeton University with three graduate degrees, including a doctorate in government and international relations from Georgetown University, Gallagher may have realized that the geopolitical and economic significance of China in today’s world makes doing anything about the fentanyl traffic impossible.
We are in a different world and a different time today. There is no Richard Nixon dispatching an “eyes only” telegram to Ambassador Bill Handley in Ankara on July 9, 1970, ordering him to return to Washington “at the request of the President for consultations, and stating that the President places the highest priority on the drug problem notwithstanding the defense and political components.” [Ref: Declassified White House papers of Henry Kissinger, July 10, 1970]
This order to Handley followed an earlier entreaty by Under-Secretary Elliot Richardson in a Secret “eyes only” telegram on May 6, 1970, in which Richardson explained that his job and Handley’s job were at risk if they didn’t succeed in getting Turkey out of the opium business: “It is now perfectly clear, as a result, that the Department, the Embassy, the Foreign Service and you and I are definitely on the spot to produce results.” [Ref: Declassified DOS Telegram State 068968, Amembassy Ankara, 6 May 70]
This unpublished de facto drug control strategy worked and within two years, Turkey was out of the opium business, the French Connection was history, and we as a nation were ready to tackle the next drug problem. Or were we?
Realistically, it would be foolhardy to think that President Biden or even President Trump would or could replicate the doings of Nixon and Kissinger and how they handled America’s heroin problem more than a half-century ago. It’s often said and dubiously attributed to Winston Churchill that “Generals are always prepared to fight the last war.” But what worked in the last war may not work in the next one and that seems to be the situation in which we find ourselves when it comes to dealing with China and the fentanyl crisis.
So, the mission becomes thus: can we do more than simply describe the problem and offer recommendations that have little likelihood of being adopted and even less likelihood of working should they be adopted? The agencies designed to protect public health against such dangers have been compromised by succumbing to something surprisingly and shockingly like the Stockholm Syndrome. After combatting the Harm Reduction forces for many years, our Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Office of National Drug Control Policy are squarely nowadays in the Harm Reduction camp.
Our most recent National Drug Control Strategy issued by President Biden in 2022 mentions China three times but the phrase “harm reduction” appears 198 times. In December 2021, HHS announced its Harm Reduction Grant Program and would begin accepting grant applications for a program funded to the tune of $29.250 million.
Maybe Gallagher knows something we don’t!
John Coleman
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