China is the manufacturing heart of the world, everything you would need to make nearly anything you wanted, has to pass through, be processed in, or be manufactured by China. So how exactly do those "raw materials" find their way into the USA? The answer might come as a surprise to you: Fentanyl is smuggled into America for Americans, by other Americans. (CATO Institute, 2022; NY Times, 2024).
Not only are the majority of the traffickers American, but also "over 90 percent of fentanyl border seizures occur at legal border crossings and interior vehicle checkpoints".
When it comes to sourcing the materials necessary to make Fentanyl, you can thank organizations like the Express Association of America, a lobbying group for FedEx, UPS, and DHL for making it that much easier by lobbing to have the de minimis rule's value increased.
This change to trade policy has upended the logistics of international drug trafficking. In the past few years, the United States has become a major transshipment point for Chinese-made chemicals used by Mexico’s cartels to manufacture the fentanyl that’s devastating U.S. communities, anti-narcotics agents say. Traffickers have pulled it off by riding a surge in e-commerce that’s flooding the U.S. with packages, helped by that trade provision.
-- Reuters, 2024
The de minimis limit was raised in 2016, which is what created the conditions that made transporting these chemical compounds through the US so ideal. There is a clear profit motive in raising that minimum. "The rollback [of de minimis] would snarl supply chains and raise consumer prices" (Reuters, 2024). According to John Pickel, a former U.S. Customs official and now senior director of international supply chain policy at the National Foreign Trade Council, the de minimis rules do not enable smuggling, stating "traffickers would continue to sneak boxes into the U.S." even without the rule. Though, even Reuters admits that the rout being taken now by smugglers is a "streamlined system", and that this system is so dense that "just a tiny fraction of the nearly 4million de minimis parcels arriving [...] daily are inspected by U.S. Customs." This motivation is echoed by the head of the Express Association of America, a lobbying group for FedEx, UPS and DHL, stating they "want to keep the [de minimis] channel open for as many goods as possible because streamlined entry saves them money."
You can see the impact of this desirable, streamlined port of entry by looking at the stark rise of synthetic opioid overdoses (other than methadone) in the US:
This rise aligns with the 2016 rule change, which seems to indicate that a cheaper more streamlined port of entry doesn't just benefit shippers, it also benefits the manufactures of Fentanyl.
This, however, is naturally just a byproduct of a more profound problem. What drives a maintenance worker from Tucson to "[ferry] about 7,000 kilos of fentanyl-making chemicals to an operative of the Sinaloa Cartel", a quantity of chemicals "sufficient to produce 5.3 billion pills"? (Reuters, 2024)
The New York Times seems to have picked up the scent,
A college football star was lured in by a friend after dropping out of school. A mother raising three special-needs children took the job while facing eviction. A homeless man was recruited from an encampment in a Walmart parking lot. [...]
“The cartels are directly recruiting anyone who is willing to do it, which typically is someone who needs the money,” said Tara McGrath, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California. “The cartels spread their tentacles and grab ahold of vulnerable people at every possible opportunity.” [...]
One woman met her recruiter while in rehab in Los Angeles, where the two struck up a friendship [...] The woman, who asked to be identified by her first initial, M., said that her friend started pressuring her to smuggle drugs only after they spent years getting to know each other. When M. resisted, her friend flew into a rage. [...]
The job offer reached Gustavo in San Diego after he drank too much beer at a party and confessed to a friend that he badly needed money. At the time, he was the main provider for his mother in their San Diego apartment. His brother had moved out, and his parents were divorced. Gustavo was working at a grocery store, but struggled to pay the bills. “I want to be a boss,” he told his friend that night. “This job isn’t feeding me and my mom.”
-- NY Times, 2024
Yet, the New York Times has nothing to say about the conditions that drive these people to risk their lives. Each of them sentenced to jail time. M was sentenced to 18 months in prison, Gustavo spent 32 months in a federal prison. The question always seems to be "Who is providing the fentanyl?", "How do we stop the fentanyl from getting into the country?", and never, "how do we ensure citizens are not self-medicating with things like fentanyl?"
The profile of those entangled in this scheme to traffic materials and fentanyl across the boarder seems to be of the desperate and vulnerable type. Those with economic hardships, or battling their own addictions. This whole conversation about China's role in all this is moot when you get to the heart of what drives people to substances and to quick cash. It is a cyclical demand, where the poorest among us traffic the materials needed to make the narcotics that the rest of the poorest among us used to cope with their material conditions. Statistics from Addiction Group show how bleak this reality is:
- Individuals living below the federal poverty line have about 36% higher odds of developing substance abuse issues than those in the highest income brackets.
- Drug overdose deaths among adults with no college education grew from about 12 per 100,000 in 2000 to 82 per 100,000 in 2021, far outpacing increases among more educated groups.
- 85% of the U.S. prison population either has an active substance use disorder or was incarcerated for crimes involving drugs or drug use.
- Lower-Income Prevalence: National data consistently show that people in households making under $20,000 per year have significantly higher rates of illicit drug use and alcohol misuse than those earning $75,000 or above.
- Poverty Overlaps: High-poverty neighborhoods often see compounded risk factors: poor access to healthcare, elevated stress levels, and limited supportive services.
- Cycle of Financial Strain: Addiction perpetuates financial instability, as funds meant for basic needs may go toward substances, leading to deeper poverty and, in some cases, homelessness.
If China stopped being the most cost-efficient supplier of the materials needed to produce Fentanyl tomorrow, the whole trade would simply find the next most cost-efficient supplier. In a time when car loan defaults are at an all-time high, where 1 in 3 Americans say they rely on credit cards to make ends meet, 60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, and an estimated 29 million American adults lack the ability to pay for needed medical care, it is no wonder where the Fentanyl Crisis really comes from. It is a crisis of despair, with millions of Americans coping at both ends, creating an interdependency feed back loop, like a snake eating its own tail.