The Biden administration has launched a major crackdown on fentanyl trafficking, announcing a series of indictments and sanctions against Chinese companies and executives involved in importing the chemicals used to produce the deadly drug. This action, which includes charges against eight Chinese companies and indictments against 12 executives, is the latest effort in the fight against the most devastating overdose crisis in US history. The move comes ahead of senior administration officials' visit to Mexico, where cartels are part of the global trafficking network, for discussions on tackling the drug threat.

According to officials, the trafficking network includes cartel leaders, drug traffickers, money launderers, clandestine lab operators, security forces, weapons suppliers, and chemical suppliers. The global fentanyl supply chain, which ultimately leads to the deaths of Americans, often starts with chemical companies in China. Most of the precursor chemicals needed to manufacture fentanyl come from China, and the companies involved frequently use fake return addresses and mislabel their products to avoid detection by law enforcement.

To combat this issue, the Justice Department has charged the eight companies with advertising, manufacturing, and distributing precursor chemicals for synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Additionally, the Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on 28 people and companies, primarily in China and Canada, cutting them off from the US financial system and prohibiting any business transactions with them. The administration aims to bring all the defendants to justice and target the financial flows that fuel the global illicit drug trade. Mexico and China are identified as the primary sources of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked directly into the US.

The Drug Enforcement Administration states that nearly all the precursor chemicals required for fentanyl production originate from China. The Justice Department cited an example involving a Chinese pharmaceutical technology company that advertised xylazine, a horse tranquilizer often mixed with fentanyl to enhance its effects. The company shipped these chemicals to the US and Mexico, with one of the purchasers in Mexico being associated with the Sinaloa Cartel. This latest action follows a series of measures taken against Sinaloa cartel members, cash couriers, and cartel fraud schemes.

However, Republicans argue that the Biden administration needs to do more to address the fentanyl crisis. Some Republican state attorneys general have called on designating Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, while others have urged the declaration of fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. Despite these demands, no such actions have been taken thus far. Fentanyl has become the deadliest drug in the US, with drug overdose deaths increasing more than sevenfold from 2015 to 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Over 100,000 deaths each year since 2020 have been linked to drug overdoses, with about two-thirds of them connected to fentanyl.

This death toll is more than 10 times that of the drug-related deaths during the height of the crack epidemic in 1988. To confront this crisis, the Biden administration has implemented over 200 sanctions related to the illegal drug trade. State lawmakers across the country are also pushing for stricter penalties for possessing fentanyl. The Justice Department is allocating approximately $345 million in federal funding over the next year to support mentoring for at-risk youth and increase access to naloxone, an overdose-reversal drug.

Moreover, a bipartisan group of legislators in the Senate Banking and Armed Services committees has introduced legislation that would declare fentanyl trafficking a national emergency. This legislation aims to use Treasury's sanctions authority to combat the proliferation of fentanyl in the US, impose reporting requirements, and empower the president to seize sanctioned property of fentanyl traffickers for law enforcement efforts.