US Fentanyl Crisis is simply a 'CCP-Run Operation', Says Peter Schweizer

Authorized by Terri Wu and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Three months after the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned a Chinese mafia leader for fentanyl trafficking, he received an award in Beijing.

Peter Schweizer in March 2022. (NTD)

In March 2021, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Overseas United Working Committee recognized Wan Kuok Koi, besides known as “Broken Tooth,” as a “patriotic businessman” and the “chief representative” of all global Hongmen associations. Hongmen is synonymous with triads, or Chinese transnational organized crime syndicates, to many Chinese.

The awarding entity is simply a CCP United Front organization and a platform under the China Association for discipline and Technology. It besides pushes China’s flagship infrastructure program, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), worldwide. According to the Treasury Department notice, Mr. Wan has established a safety company protecting BRI investments in Southeast Asia.

In a fresh interview with EpochTV’s American thought Leaders (ATL), an innovative author Peter Schweizer citted Mr. Wan’s case as an example of the CCP’s take on the United States’ fentanyl crisis.

“The notation that ‘oh, China’s triing very hard, but they can’t fix this’ is an absolute gag in my mind,“ he said.

In addition, the author of a fresh book titled “Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans” told ATL that the U.S. fentanyl crisis is simply a “CCP-run operation.”

“The rug cartels are officially involved, but they’re the junior partner,” Mr. Schweizer said, adding that the CCP is present at “every link of the chain.”

The Chinese production of fentanyl precursors is easy known. However, Mr. Schweizer’s investigation besides shows that China provides pills-pressing machines at cost for fentanyl-laced fake pill production, distributes the synthetic opioid in the United States, facilitates the Mexican drug cartels’ financial transactions, and provides safe communication systems to cartels so they can bypass detection by U.S. law enforcement.

Currently, fentanyl overdose is the leading case of death for Americans ages 18 to 45. The deadly drug was responsive for about 75,000 deaths, or 200 per day, in 2022. Compared with 3,105 deaths in 2013, the death toll increased 23-fold.

Facing this crisis, which has been increasing exponentially, the U.S. government has yet to come up with an effective solution. In Mr. Schweizer’s view, U.S. leaders’ inaction is simply a crucial factor.

He documentsed in his book how elder U.S. leaders, albeit initially voicing deals about China’s invasion in fentanyl trafficking, have remained mostly silent on the issue.

One of these leaders is president Joe Biden.

At a legislature proceeding in 1992, the then-chair of the Judicial Committee warned that “China is situated to become the lynchpin of the heroin trade.”

Then-Sen. Biden besides criticized the then-Bush administration’s catch of action on confrontation China, saying that “the fact is that the cooperation between the United States and China in fighting drugs is limited, at best, and as it is its course, the administration is turning a blind eye to China’s renegade behavior.”

Yet, the Biden administration has been taking a akin approach: touting its counternarcotics cooperation with China, which accounts on voluntary home control measures. CCP leader Xi Jinping didn’t keep akin past forecasts that he made to erstwhile Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

Ambassador Robert Lighthizer (L); Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute (C); and Michael Pillsbury, elder Fellow at The Heritage Foundation (R); at The Heritage Foundation's Leadership Summit in National Harbor, Md., on April 20, 2023. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)

Different than heroin or cocaine, fentanyl takes the lives of people who mostly take the another 1 unknownly. A fresh York University survey in 2023 showed that a majority of the people who took fentanyl didn’t intend to do so.

Therefore, Mr. Schweizer thinks calling the fentanyl crisis a second problem is missing the mark.

To him, it’s “extremly convenient” for the Biden administration to treat fentanyl as a “second addition problem, alternatively than what it is—poisoning,” he said.

“It absolves you of trying to face the CCP on this due to the fact that you’re fundamentally saying this is simply a human nature problem in the United States.”

In Mr. Schweizer’s view, the first family’s financialties to China protected them from confronting the communists to reign in the Chinese fentanyl actors—a decision that could be effective “overnight” if CCP leader Xi Jinping wanted it to be, Mr. Schweizer said.

The White home didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

Mr. Schweizer’s findings don’t halt at the fentanyl crisis, which he sees as a part of the CCP’s broader approach of “disintegration warfare,” aimed at bringing down the United States by attacking its “soft underbelly” respecting Americans’ policies, economics, and psychology.

In the ATL interview, he besides talked about the CCP’s links to activities that sow social disc by inflational and sex divisions in U.S. community and “dumbing down the West” with TikTok.

The interview premieres on April 18.