While due to Biden administration’s pro-immigrant policies, hundreds and thousands of illegal immigrants are entering the United States, transnational drug trafficking networks have expedited their activities are pushing various types of drugs, including Fentanyl, which is causes death of thousands of Americans every year. According to statistics, Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, continues to drive overdose death in the US, which hit a record 107,000 only in 2021. One of the key reasons behind such massive increase in availability of drugs is Biden administration’s open border policy and reluctance in effectively combating transnational drug trafficking rackets, including those run by Colombian drug cartels, Afghan narco-rackets Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, and notorious terror don Dawood Ibrahim’s infamous D Company.
It essential to mention here that, Team Biden’s soft-on-crime approach of authorities in Democrat-run cities and states have created a perfect storm for the narco-trafficking into the United States of drugs such as Fentanyl and an epidemic of overdose deaths.
Commenting on death due to Fentanyl, Andrew Abbott in an analysis for Amar said:
According to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, from April 2020 to April 2021, 100,306 Americans died from drug overdoses – the highest number in history – and the first time, that gruesome figure had topped 100,000. After drug overdose deaths rose sharply from 2000-2017, they leveled off and began to decline from 2018 to 2020, thanks in large part to Trump-era border and drug control policies. However, the effects of the pandemic reversed much of that progress, and now President Joe Biden’s policy of effectively open borders threatens to exacerbate the crisis to previously unimaginable heights.
Experts believe the widespread despair and isolation brought on by pandemic shutdowns were the primary causes of the spike in overdose deaths during 2020 and 2021. According to the CDC, “Synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, caused nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of all drug overdose deaths in the 12 months ending April 2021, up 49 percent from the year before.” While deaths from the use of other drugs also increased, no drug in recent history has caused more deaths than fentanyl.
While there are many different versions, fentanyl is, by far, the most prolific synthetic opioid and the largest contributor to the record overdose rates. Most traditional painkillers (Opium, Heroin, Morphine) are known as ‘opiates’ and are derived from natural plants like the opium poppy.
Production of these drugs usually requires access to large fields of natural plants that can be harvested and synthesized locally. This is how drug cartels in places like Afghanistan and Central America produced these powerful and lucrative substances.
These new and deadly painkillers are not simply more powerful, but exponentially more efficient to create. Synthetic opioids are generally not made with plant matter, but are instead created almost entirely in a lab and ‘synthesized’ with chemical compounds. As one DEA Agent told Science Magazine, “For the cartels, why wait for a field of poppies to grow and harvest if you can get your hands on the precursor chemicals and cook a batch of fentanyl in a lab?” As a result, even a small lab can create larger amounts of drugs that are far more powerful than their predecessors.
Key players behind production of Fentanyl
According to organizations monitoring production and trafficking in narcotics, Fentanyl or synthetic opioids are overwhelmingly produced by Lebanese Hezbollah as well as Myanmar-based jihadist outfit ‘Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA’. It may be mentioned here that, significant stake of narco-trafficking is carried-out by Dawood Ibrahim’s cartel under direct patronization of Pakistani spy agency Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI). For years, Hezbollah, ARSA and Dawood Ibrahim’s cartel have established production bases in a number of South American countries, including Colombia and Mexico.
Drugs such as Fentanyl are being smuggled into the United States as well as European countries and Britain by hiding them in packages, including fish consignments. As authorities cracked down on the practice, drug trafficking cartels began importing the drugs into Colombia and Mexico, where they are then rerouted across the US border by the cartels. According to 2020 report, drug manufacturers have expanded their plant operations into Colombia and Mexico so that the drugs can be directly produced in those countries and more conveniently smuggled across the borders.
It was in part as a response to this growing crisis that President Donald Trump enacted Title 42 in March 2020, a provision that allows the government to remove foreign nationals arriving from countries where there is an “existence of any communicable disease”. As a result, the federal government was able to aggressively crack down on drug smugglers – saving lives in the process.
But as Biden administration has eliminated Trump-era border policies, Fentanyl has once again begun pouring across the US-Mexico border and making its way into American communities. As illegal border crossings have surged to record highs, so too has the number of illegal narcotics that border patrol agents seize – indicating that there is a far greater volume of illicit drugs that make it through border checkpoints.
At the same time, Democrats at the federal and state level have continued their soft-on-crime approach when it comes to drug trafficking. Just this week, two suspected drug traffickers who were arrested with US$150,000 worth of fentanyl pills were released after a short stint in jail. Throughout the country, the story is the same: criminals are caught and then released to continue poisoning Americans.
