Illustration: Liu Xidan/GT

Editor's Note:

China has carried out extensive and in-depth counternarcotics cooperation with the US. However, despite this fact, the US has blamed China for the prevalence of fentanyl on US soil, a move that undermines China's goodwill and the cooperative atmosphere between the two countries. How should the US view its own crisis? What efforts has China made in the anti-drug fight? The Global Times collects opinions from Chinese and American scholars to discuss this issue. This is the fourth installment of the series.


US President-elect Donald Trump's remarks on Mexico and China have put the fentanyl issue under the spotlight again. Since the early 1990s, when the US government allowed private pharmaceutical companies to make and push with doctors more potent opioids while insisting that opioids were not addictive, we've seen an explosion in opioid abuse, including newer and more powerful ones like fentanyl. 

The abuse of opioids like fentanyl accounts for a large portion of our rising overall drug use. The US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) maintains that China is the largest source of fentanyl and related substances to the US and that Mexico is one of the largest traffickers of fentanyl into the US. Many news headlines of current affairs expose growing hostilities from the US toward China and Mexico, with drug production and trafficking as the ostensible justification. 

What doesn't make nearly as many headlines are the true sources of our drug abuse problems. No shadowy foreign powers are forcing Americans to buy and abuse drugs. 

In fact, pain-numbing drugs are easy to sell to people in pain. People here in the US are self-medicating because life is hard, and it's getting much more so with each passing day for the majority of us. 

The US may be the wealthiest nation on Earth, but our capitalistic means of distributing even the most basic of necessities has led to ungodly suffering that goes untended by our system of government. Housing costs are at all-time highs.

Personal debt is at an all-time high. Wages have been effectively stagnant for half a century while the cost of education and groceries has risen. Job security is intentionally poor and most American families don't have enough money in the bank to survive a medical emergency costing just $500.

It's of little surprise, then, that homelessness is also on the rise. Depression rates are high, while lifestyle diseases continue to increase. 

We know that exposure to poverty in youth can lead to higher rates of disordered drug use, as can untreated mental illnesses. 

So far, many American politicians have suggested outward-blaming supposed solutions like higher tariffs on Chinese and Mexican imports that would only increase the cost of living for Americans already under stress and at risk of becoming a drug abuser.

There are, of course, many ways our politicians can help treat our drug abuse problems. We know, for example, that medically uninsured people have an increased risk for drug and alcohol dependence, yet both Democrat and Republican elected officials uniformly oppose the US joining the developed world by providing its people guaranteed healthcare.

Anomie in the US is rising as we become more fearful and isolated. 

We are acting as though neighboring countries like Mexico are to blame for providing us with the drugs we're demanding while ignoring our disastrous "War on Drugs."

The current feigned concern from some politicians over America's drug problem is merely a thin veil to cover their attempts at continuing our imperial violence over the rest of the world.

The author is a Chicago-based columnist covering US politics and culture. He is also a university English and critical journalism instructor. [email protected]