America's Deadliest Drug Crisis: Biden Administration Targets China's Role

The Biden administration announced a series of indictments and sanctions against Chinese companies and executives blamed for importing the chemicals used to make the deadly opioid fentanyl.

US Officials said the actions include charges against eight Chinese companies accused of advertising, manufacturing and distributing chemicals used to make synthetic opioids like fentanyl. 

Tuesday’s indictments came one day before Biden administration officials will travel to Mexico, where drug cartels are also part of the global trafficking network. 

“We know that this network includes the cartels’ leaders, their drug traffickers, their money launderers, their clandestine lab operators, their security forces, their weapons suppliers, and their chemical suppliers,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland at a news conference. “And we know that this global fentanyl supply chain, which ends with the deaths of Americans, often starts with chemical companies in China.”

In addition to charging eight companies, the Justice Department also indicted 12 executives for their alleged roles in drug trafficking. 

Coordinated Action

In a coordinated move, the Treasury Department announced sanctions against 28 people and companies in China and Canada that will cut them off from the U.S. financial system and prohibit anyone in the U.S. from doing business with them. No arrests have yet been made though Garland said prosecutors intended to "bring every one of these defendants to justice.”

“As the Deputy Attorney General will highlight shortly, the cases being unsealed today are part of a whole-of-government effort to attack every aspect of the trafficking of deadly fentanyl,” Garland said in a press release.

“That effort includes not only Justice Department prosecutors and DEA [and FBI] agents, but also our partners at the Treasury Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.”

Fentanyl is the deadliest drug in the U.S. today. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stated that drug overdose deaths have increased more than sevenfold from 2015 to 2021.

More than 100,000 deaths a year have been linked to drug overdoses since 2020 and about two-thirds of those are related to fentanyl. The death toll is more than 10 times as many drug deaths as in 1988, at the height of the crack epidemic.

File Photo, courtesy DOJ Public Affairs