Recently, the Beltway Junta has been trying desperately to paper over reports of increasing Opioid fatalities in the United States. As part of their 'depopulation' agenda, of course, the Oligarchy desires this situation, but the situation has reached such proportions that it's become impossible to hide from the general public. So, both the Junta and the Controlled Opposition have agreed upon a narrative blaming China for the problem---much like they blame Russia for spreading 'disinformation' whenever their crimes are publicly exposed in the alternative media.
With great fanfare and 'bipartisan' support, the nominal United States Government officially listed China as a Major Drug Source Country and imposed several pointless sanctions on Chinese companies making pharmaceutical supplies. This, in spite of the fact that China (unlike the US) bans Fentanyl even as a prescription drug. China's officials have been speaking out against this. In an interview with Wei Xiaojun---head of the Chinese equivalent of the DEA---some rare admissions were made as to the state of the Opioid Crisis in China. While it is fairly severe, it pales in comparison to the American problem---and, unlike the US, China has been making substantial progress in suppressing the illegal drug trade.
The Global Times also went on to publish an investigative report on the Opioid situation here. Americans have been conditioned by our own Corporate Media to sneer reflexively at anything published by China (as if our Media isn't State-disseminated propaganda itself). The most compelling aspect of this article is that is an outsider's view of corrupt, corporatist Western Culture. If this is indeed Propaganda that the Chinese Government employs to tell it's citizens what to think of the West, it's a very damning indictment that they don't really need to exaggerate or lie much to make their case that postmodern Western Civilization is a sham Democracy; and that most of us are really just slaves to the Corporate Leviathan that rules over us, and seeks to spread it's Empire of Domination over the entire world. It may be 'anti-American propaganda used to prop up a Communist regime'; but if so, it's certainly effective, because so much of it is based on the truth. In fact, it is noteworthy because it cites sources from our own Government-Media Complex.
The report states that "the US is plagued with a drug abuse problem more acute than any other countries as 12 percent of global drug users come from the North American country, two times higher than the proportion of its population. Provisional data indicates that nearly 110,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2022, the highest of all time, and more than two-thirds of the deaths involved the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl, as per US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
This number was going down under the Trump Administration's Opioid Task Force, incidentally; but Orange Man Bad, and we know the rest of the story. Today, dope-pushers are running free again, while our President-in-Exile may likely end up in jail---a perfect metaphor for Americans' social priorities.
"US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, when visiting China in late August, claimed that US hopes to cooperate with China to tackle the rapidly increasing rates of fentanyl overdoses. However, the country simultaneously keeps scapegoating China on the issue, imposing sanctions and filing criminal charges against Chinese enterprises and individuals."
It should also be noted that the Trump Administration made an agreement with China to work jointly on eradicating Opium supplies in Afghanistan, and Trump also agreed to end the so-called Freedom of Navigation exercises in the South China Sea so that China could focus more heavily upon suppressing smuggling in the region. The Pentagon ignored both of those orders.
China likewise launched military operations in Burma aimed at destroying the Opioid networks illegally operating there. US NGOs backed by George Soros and Bill Gates fought China desperately; framing the narrative as 'ethnic cleansing' against the Burmese Rohingya people---whose population was largely engaged in it. They've promoted a similar narrative against Chinese actions among the Uighurs in Western China who are doing the same things. Coloring anything as 'racist' in the American Media is like a magic incantation---it causes immediate cessation of reasoning. However, that formula never applies when our Media blames all Mexicans for drug trafficking on our Southern Border.
The report goes on to trace the sordid history of Big Pharma and US Deep State collusion beginning with the OxyContin scandals of the 1990s. "The pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma colluded with US medicinal regulators and developed aggressive marketing tactics to promote its brand name product OxyContin, an extended-release form of Oxycodone, as less likely to cause addiction, raking in tens of millions of dollars. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), charged with the responsibility of prescription drug use regulation, gave OxyContin the green light in 1995 even though neither long-term studies nor assessments of its addictive capabilities had been thoroughly conducted."
I well remember this scandal, and that several officials within the Clinton Co-Presidency were implicated, as noted in the report:
"Two principal FDA reviewers who originally approved Purdue's application took positions at the company after leaving the agency. In the following two decades, more FDA staffers involved in opioid approvals left the FDA to work for opioid makers, according to the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics. Purdue offered kickbacks, paid lecturers, and organized free seminar vacations to doctors to incentivize them to prescribe OxyContin, leading to a tenfold increase in prescriptions for less serious pain, from about 670,000 in 1997 to about 6.2 million in 2002."
Purdue is now an insolvent corporation; it was formerly headed by a billionaire 'woke capitalist.' (Sound familiar?) The case is still in litigation, mostly over corrupt CEOs and Federal bureaucrats trying to protect their assets. Of course, nobody in our Mainstream Media is going to talk about the revolving-door bureaucracy, 'woke capitalists' in Big Pharma---or about the obvious fact that, coupled with the stated 'population control' agenda of these interests---that our drug crisis is part and parcel of a deliberate, Corporate-Government organized system encouraging addiction and overdose deaths. So, who is the real party here engaging in Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide?
The report also notes the collusion of the Insurance Cartels in promoting the epidemic: "Most insurance, especially for poor people, won't pay for anything but a pill," said Judith Feinberg, a professor at West Virginia University with expertise in infectious diseases associated with drug injection. The US Department of Health and Human Services estimated that about 11 million people in the US consume Oxycodone in a non-medical way annually."
In the American Healthcare System, cost-effectiveness has replaced what was once personal care. Medical personnel once felt a responsibility for their patients; today, the primary responsibility is to profit the 'stakeholders' in the Insurance Cartels. Patients are simply commodities. Needless to say, actual treatment for addictions is not an especially high priority to these people. That matter they leave up to their corporate cronies in the Prison-Industrial Complex.
"Addicts are not redeemed." the report notes, "The large, ever-expanding group of drug dependence, without proper social support and intervention, easily became the victims of new, more powerful drugs. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid which is also FDA-approved, is up to 50 and 100 times stronger than heroine and morphine respectively. Fentanyl, the cheaper to make yet more lethal drug and its close cousins became the biggest drug-related killers in the US in 2016, the Associated Press reported."
The Trump Administration did make an effort to focus on treatment for addicts, despite considerable obstruction and bristling, even from members of his own Party. Trump's policy cut too deeply into too many profit-margins and since has been scrapped.
The very notion of investing in treatment programs often brings a firestorm of fury from many on the Postmodern Right. "No way! Why should we be taxed to pay for someone else's poor lifestyle choices?!?" is one common refrain heard. Aside from the humanitarian aspect---which seems to matter very little to today's new breed of Conservatism anyway---it doesn't occur to anybody that we're already paying a lot for overpriced, for-profit prisons, the crimes committed to support drug habits, and declining quality-of-life in general. Sadly, it's doubtful that such arguments carry much weight. 'Justice' in America today is really more focused on retaliation, revenge, and scapegoating; and advocating rehabilitation is seen as being a soft-on-crime weenie. Contrary to American Media propaganda, incidentally, the Chinese Justice System prioritizes treatment for drug-offenders.
"With around 4 percent of the world's population, the US consumes 80 percent of the world's opioids. Why is the US?
"The US' drug problem, including the current fentanyl abuse crisis, is deeply rooted in the country's lobbying political structure and ideology, said Zhang Yifei, an associate research fellow at the Institute of American Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The colossal profits bundle pharmaceutical companies with the FDA, sponsored politicians, academic groups, and the media, making the fentanyl crisis a predictable tragedy in the US that has enriched a few at the expense of many lives lost.
"Academic institutions provide 'scientific proof,' media and think tanks propagate said proof, and drug makers lobby the government - this is a very complete and mature chain, Zhang elaborated, 'They have various ways to exchange rights and interests through the Revolving Door system.'
"Zhang also pointed to 'the pan-liberalism trend in the US, which emphasizes the absolute freedom of individuals.' US governments, be they federal or state, are incapable of exercising effective regulation on many issues, although some of them, like drugs, have endangered the public."
Sadly, I don't think that one can argue with any of Zhang's assessment. In fact, it could be added that the American population in general isn't exactly making it difficult for exploitative corporations and corrupt politicians to get away with their criminal activities. Despite annual six-figure casualties from narcotics, the Drug Crisis doesn't even crack the top 10 of voter concerns.
As the report showed---and many of us recall---the Opioid Epidemic began first with Big Pharma in the 1990s, and surged after the US Occupation of Afghanistan. According to official sources, "from 1999 to 2017, more than 399,000 people died from drug overdoses that involved prescription and illicit opioids. Those addicted to opioids, both legal and illegal, are increasingly young, white, and female, with 1.2 million women addicted compared to 0.9 million men in 2015. The problem is worse in rural areas." Just as the 'Cocaine Epidemic' of the Bush-Clinton Era proliferated narcotics among Black Communities, the Opioid Crisis of the Bush Jr-Obama Era targets the White working-class.
After the Biden 'Administration' seized power, Afghanistan was abandoned due to increasing anti-drug actions in the region---mostly by China and Iran. Operations were brought back to the United States and compromised Latin American countries. With the downfall of the Trump Justice Department and a complete stranglehold on the American Media, the Oligarchy has no fear of exposure. Since 2021, Opioid overdoses and addiction rates have returned to, and even surpassed pre-2017 levels.
The American drug epidemic is the result of an orchestrated policy, the Strategy of Tension, the Depopulation Agenda, and cultivating anti-China sentiments. Most importantly, though, it is also a product of our own making. The American public---which sees the effect of the crisis before its own eyes every day---continues pretending not to see, and so it goes along unabated.