U.S. President Joe Biden announced on Friday nearly $1.5 billion to fund responses to opioid overdoses and support recovery.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will disseminate the funding through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) State Opioid Response and Tribal Opioid Response grant programs as part of National Recovery Month.
According to The Hill, the funds will include the following allocations: $104 million allocated to rural areas to expand treatment and prevention, $20.5 million to increase access to recovery supports across the country, and $12 million to bolster law enforcement in High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA).
“Our nation is facing 108,000 overdose deaths in just 12 months. That’s one life lost every five minutes around the clock,” said Office of National Drug Control Policy Director Rahul Gupta at a White House overdose briefing on Thursday.
“And President Biden and this administration are taking historic actions to meet this challenge.”
Quite honestly, I applaud the federal government’s efforts to fight the opioid crisis in this country, however, going so far as to say President Biden and his administration are “taking historic actions” is a bunch of BS.
I have been writing about the opioid crisis for years, and it just keeps getting worse, and the facts are undisputable – From 1999–2019, nearly 500,000 people died in the U.S. from an overdose involving any opioid, including prescription and illicit opioids.
There have been more innovative programs and state and national resources provided to the public than Carter’s little liver pills, and yet, despite all that has been offered and done – the problem gets worse.
What about the source of the opioid problem?
In the past 12 months, over 108,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Of all these deaths, close to two-thirds involved fentanyl.
Fentanyl is an incredibly potent synthetic opioid greater than 50 times more powerful than heroin. Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45,
This gives rise to the next question someone should be asking – Where in the hell is all that fentanyl coming from, and why don’t we stop the supply line?
Three years ago, the New York Times reported that much of the illicit fentanyl that found its way to the U.S. was easily ordered online from a source in China and seamlessly shipped by international delivery companies, including the United States Postal Service.
Fentanyl sourced from China accounted for 97 percent of the drug seized from international mail services by United States law enforcement in both the 2016 and 2017 fiscal years, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
At the end of 2018, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, promised President Donald Trump his government was taking steps to stop the flow of the illicit drug into the U.S.
Some six months later, China did exactly that. As a result, the large, freewheeling and mostly unregulated fentanyl industry that had operated in a gray area of Chinese law appears to have stopped selling the drug for export — or at least as openly as hundreds of suppliers once did.
However, where there is a will, there is a way. Since that time, illicit fentanyl production has largely shifted from China to Mexico, where it is manufactured on an industrial scale using precursor chemicals imported from China.
The global drug trade remains a multi-billion-dollar business, and China’s supply of precursor chemicals represents a sizable piece of the illicit pie, while Mexico’s drug cartels are getting an even bigger piece of that pie.
As the principal supplier of precursor chemicals to Mexican cartels, China has an opportunity to help stem the flow of deadly drugs to the U.S. and prove it is a responsible member of the international community. If it doesn’t, the U.S. must use all the instruments of national power to ensure the safety and security of the American people.
But the bottom line is simple, yet will be difficult to manage. We have a problem with not only China, but Mexico – China for being the source of precursor chemicals, and Mexico and its cartels.
That $1.5 billion is not but a drop in a very large bucket. All the naloxone doses don’t mean squat as long as the sources of the illegal drugs are not stopped.
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
