How the Opium Wars Became the Fentanyl Crisis
Let's Call It What It Is: The Fentanyl War
This is a lethal dose of fentanyl.
The fentanyl crisis, what I’m calling the Fentanyl War, didn’t start in the 21st century. It did not even start in America. It started in the year 1600 with the advent of the first drug cartel, the East India Company (EIC), sometimes called the British East India Company. Originally founded to cash on the lucrative spice trade, the EIC quickly found there was more money to be made in slave trading. Morality and integrity was never a strong suit at the EIC. They were prodigious buyers and sellers of slaves not just to Europe and the Americas, either. They often captured people from Africa and sent them as slaves to work in India or Asia. As EIC grew rich, they noticed that poppies grew prodigiously in some of the lands they occupied in South Asia.
While we in America today use the term “opioid” to refer to a whole family of drugs, there are a couple of minor esoteric distinctions. The addictive substance extracted from poppy seeds is known as opium, and it was generally smoked. Like morphine and codeine, it is a “natural” or botanical type of opioid, sometimes called “opiates.” In recent times, we created synthetic versions of similar drugs, such as oxycodone and fentanyl and buprenorphine. All of these drugs together fit under the umbrella of “opioids.” They are chemically similar, have strong psychoactive properties, relieve pain, can induce euphoria, and are addictive.
China knew all too well what opium was and made it illegal. But, in the late 18th century, EIC started bringing opium to China, where they found criminals willing to deal the drugs. By 1797, EIC was selling about 330 tons of opium a year in China. China kept making it illegal— they did it once in 1729, again in 1799, then again in 1814, and even one more time in 1831. The problem was that the EIC was bringing the stuff in by the literal boatload, opium found a receptive recreational market, drug dealers were making bank, and the EIC thought it found a pretty nice little business model. By 1833, the EIC was selling over 2,500 tons of opium a year in China.
China at the time was a mostly closed society, adverse to Western ideas, much less business. They were also a net exporter meaning they sold more to the West than they bought. China merchants sold silk, porcelain, and tea to the West. China was run as an autocratic monarchy and although they had problems with poverty and even starvation, there was a merchant class of China who prospered. China did what it could to stop the EIC from dumping opium into China—it passed laws, tried to negotiate, held discussions, made arrests, and tried every diplomatic intervention they could think of. Nothing worked. It is hard to rely on historical statistics but it has been estimated that at the peak of the opium crisis in China about 25% of the Chinese population was addicted.
Then came the two opium wars: the first (1839-1843) and then the second (1856-1860). We’re fighting the third opium war, which I’m calling the Fentanyl War.
The EIC had no interest in shutting off the supply of opium to China. Slavery was a dying industry, and the drug trade was proving far more lucrative than human trafficking. China protested every way it knew how, but in the end—the British military backed the EIC. China lost big time when it signed the aptly named Unequal Treaty. Not only did China agree to pay $21M to Britain as “reparations,” the opium trade continued unabated, and Britain got possession of Hong Kong.
This same sad story was more or less repeated with the Second Opium War where, once again, opium poured into China, people got addicted, and China had to pay Europe millions in reparations, and—in this case—China made two strange concessions. It agreed to legalize opium and allow missionaries into China. It’s hard to understand how the missionaries got mixed up in this mess.
China was so into the opium culture that when Chinese immigrants came to the West Coast to find work building railroads in the 19th century, they brought opium with them. Ever heard of Tombstone, Arizona? That town’s population was one-third Chinese in its Wyatt Earp heyday and had its own opium den.
By the time Mao Zeodong came to power (which is earlier than you think—in the 1950s) he had 10M opioid addicts to deal with. He could afford to show little sympathy for them; drug dealers faced the death penalty, addicts were forced into treatment and sometimes labor, and anything to do with opium was punished harshly. Opium was officially made illegal and a dangerous substance to possess around 1949.
These two earlier Opium Wars served two purposes: they nearly destroyed China (bankrupting them financially and crippling the population with addiction) and they allowed Britain and later some other European nations to swoop in and steal Hong Kong. China lost generations of productivity from about a quarter of its population. China was also humiliated because every time they asked for help, they were punished with steep fines and land seizures. They also gave up Hong Kong, a jewel of a island city-state.
China learned from this.
Today, China makes the fentanyl precursor chemicals that are used to manufacture illicit fentanyl. (There is a licit or legal form of fentanyl used to a limited degree during surgery—I’m talking here about the illicit stuff.) This illicit fentanyl can be made readily in clandestine labs by technicians with minimal training if they can get the precursor chemicals (sort of like “sourdough starter” but for fentanyl).
At first, around the turn of the millennium, illicit fentanyl was manufactured in China and then shipped, often by mail or package services into the United States. China soon discovered that it was more efficient for them to do the complicated chemical work of making the starter substances (some of which are not even illegal), shipping them in volume to Mexico, and letting Mexican labs make the fentanyl and handle smuggling, sales, and distribution within the States. The drug money earned from fentanyl sales goes from the cartels back to China, in some very efficient and China-led money laundering operations.
In other words, China has figured out how to make us pay for the substances that are killing us. The Chinese have a saying for this—it’s killing somebody using a borrowed knife. Grisly metaphors aside, China has figured out a way to destroy our population and make money at the same time.
And just today, March 25, 2024, Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told the Biden regime it better cough up $20B to Mexico or Mexico is going to flood the border even more than it already has. There’s no reason he can’t do what he promises, either. The border is open now, Obrador just has to incentivize more people to cross it. And he’ll do it unless we ship billions to him.
China is profiting from the open fentanyl spigot, too. Peter Schweizer, in his book Blood Money, describes how Chinese banks will launder fentanyl money almost out in the open. Some of these banks have direct ties to the Chinese government. China will dutifully attend summit meeting and make promises to stop the fentanyl trade, but it does not stop.
As unlikely a partnership as it seems, China and Mexico have found a way to wage war on the United States. The most damaging part of this war is not the open border or the fentanyl—it’s the fact that the Biden regime refuses to recognize it as a war. It’s like if President Roosevelt had seen the devastation of Pearl Harbor and just declared, “It’s nothing, nothing really happened here.”
The Biden regime is willfully allowing for open borders, which facilitates the inflow of fentanyl. The border is currently being over-run and is so inadequately patrolled that fentanyl can come through even at ports of entry. It’s like a big open door that allows unlimited fentanyl into this country.
Here’s how bad it is:
Over 50% of all overdose deaths in the United States involve illicit fentanyl or fentanyl analogs (synthetic opioids chemically similar to fentanyl but technically not fentanyl).
Most overdose deaths involve “polysubstance use” or the use of more than one drugs. In many cases, “polysubstance use” means people thought they were taking one drug, such as cocaine or even a sleeping pill, and fentanyl was mixed in. A lot of people who take fentanyl do not intend to take fentanyl.
In 2021 (the latest year statistics are available) 106,699 people in the United States died of a drug overdose. That’s 292 per day.
We don’t know how many people overdosed but were resuscitated. The number of those affected by lethal or near-lethal doses is much higher than 292 persons a day.
The rate of overdose with illicit fentanyl is increasing 2.5 times faster than the rate of heroin overdoses. That’s by design (China and Mexico) and collusion (Biden regime).
Just 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of fentanyl can cause 250,000 deaths.
In 2022, the US seized 14,104 pounds of fentanyl (6,410 kilograms) at the Mexican border.
In 2024—so far—over 90 million lethal doses of fentanyl have been seized. The fentanyl grains on the pencil tip shown in the illustration are an illustration of a lethal dose.
70% of all pills seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) contain fentanyl—even pills reported to be amphetamines, benzodiazepines, sleeping pills, Viagra, and so on often contain lethal amounts of fentanyl.
After two Opium Wars that decimated China, destroyed its population, depleted its economy, humiliated it on the world stage, and nearly destroyed it, China is now turning the tables on the West with fentanyl. True, the EIC was a European outfit—and a decidedly evil one—but to China, America is the torch-bearer of that Western imperialism. China knows there is no use going after England any more, they can’t even manage Prince Harry. Instead, China has decided to tackle the center of Western power—the United States—using the very same strategy that was once used against them.
During the opium wars, the EIC found a criminal element willing to sell their illegal drugs for a profit, but overall, Chinese society fought opium tooth and nail. They made laws against opium, which they tried to enforce. Legend has it the Chinese government even wrote a letter to Queen Victoria begging her to stop poisoning the Chinese people—but it is alleged she never received it. China tried to gain international attention to its plight, but no one stood up for them.
In our new Fentanyl War, sadly, we find that our government is not opposing fentanyl importation. If they did, they’d close the border and beef up all measures to stop fentanyl inflow. We could secure the border much more tightly. We could declare the Mexican drug cartels to be terrorist organizations. The would allow us to surveil them more intensively and it would make it a criminal offense to aid and abet them in any way. We could also better enforce drug laws. But we won’t do that, either.
The fact is, China is poisoning America for political gain. They can’t beat us in a war (we have two pretty big oceans standing in their way, either side) but they have fentanyl. The great tragedy is that our political elites are complicit.
There is a saying by Chinese philosopher-author Sun Tzu, who wrote The Art of War. He said, “an evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes.”
Biden is that evil man by not doing everything in his power to block the fentanyl trade now. Biden would rather make a few bucks and eat ice cream than defend the nation that gave him everything. He doesn’t care if America is ruined and defeated, as long as he gets to be the president. This is the Fentanyl War and he is Benedict Arnold.
Can we stop the Fentanyl War? Absolutely. Perhaps we cannot stop 100% of fentanyl from reaching our country, but we can stop most of it. We are a very powerful and determined people when we wake up and take charge.
The picture below shows candy-colored fentanyl. These pills are not targeting hardcore adult drug users (many of whom inject rather than take the pills). They’re aimed at kids. They’re designed to look harmless and fun. Tell me this isn’t war! How utterly cruel is it to make poison look like candy!
I cannot imagine the Opium Wars in which the Chinese Emperors colluded with the EIC to kill off their population. Yet in our case, China and Mexico found more than willing allies in the Biden regime to poison America. America under Biden has gone insane.
We don’t have an ancient poet-philosopher like Sun Tzu to quote, but we do have crime-fighter Eliot Ness. He said, “Never stop fighting, till the fighting is done.”
So interesting! Whew...