A Republican presidential candidate has suggested that the U.S. fentanyl crisis is part of a broader national security threat.
Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, addressed the ongoing fentanyl issue during a recent speech at the Atkinson Resort and Country Club in New Hampshire. The state, whose Republican governor, Chris Sununu, recently endorsed Haley’s bid for president, has seen an alarmingly high rate of opioid-related deaths.
New Hampshire outpaced the national average growth in opioid-related deaths between 2021 and 2022, rising by 14% compared to just 0.5% nationwide. The vast majority of these fatal overdoses involved fentanyl, an incredibly potent synthetic opioid, making a minuscule dose of just 2 milligrams potentially fatal.
Yet nationwide statistics are equally alarming when considered alongside U.S. fatalities in war.
“We’ve had more Americans die of fentanyl than the Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam wars, combined,” Haley said, according to The Dallas Morning News.
While a total of 65,278 Americans died of various causes during the three military conflicts, this figure was likely surpassed by fentanyl-related deaths in 2021 alone. The data reported by the National Center for Health Statistics, which excluded methadone but did not distinguish between fentanyl and other opioids, suggested that the upwards of 70,601 fatal overdoses among Americans logged were likely mostly due to the former. In Texas, roughly five people die each day as a result of fentanyl poisoning.
Similar to war, fentanyl has claimed a considerable amount of young lives, with it being named the leading cause of death among Americans ages 18 and 45 in recent years.
Yet Haley used this comparison to draw a connection between the influx of fentanyl into the country and what she referred to as the growing threat of China to national security.
“China has been preparing for war with us for years,” she claimed, according to the DMN.
Chinese suppliers have been accused of providing most of the precursor chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl. The process is relatively inexpensive and yields considerable profit due to it being highly addictive.
As previously reported in The Dallas Express, federal prosecutors have targeted Chinese citizens, such as Chuen Fat Yip, an alleged owner of a chemical manufacturing company in Wuhan City, who was indicted on drug charges in 2021 over allegedly illegally importing $55 million worth of anabolic steroids into the U.S. over the course of five years.
Yet recent reports suggest that Chinese criminals are now shipping precursor chemicals into Mexico. Here, cartels manufacture fentanyl and then smuggle it across the border for distribution. As recently covered in The Dallas Express, just one week of seizures by the U.S. Border Patrol at the southern border yielded over 4,600 pounds of illicit drugs worth over $6 million, including 32 pounds of fentanyl.
