Tackling Fentanyl

Download or read book Tackling Fentanyl written by Committee on Foreign Affairs House of Re and published by . This book was released on 2019-10-09 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chinese made fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, is killing Americans, more than 29,000 in 2017 alone. [According to] Kirsten Madison, Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, China is a "primary source of illicit synthetic drugs coming to the United States." Paul Knierim, Deputy Chief of Operations at the Office of Global Enforcement for Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, stated in his testimony that China is one of the world's top producers of precursor chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl as well as chemicals used to process heroin and cocaine. [The] opioid epidemic is the most severe drug crisis our country has ever faced, claiming tens of thousands of American lives annually. This crisis arose largely from over reliance on prescription opioids and increasing availability of heroin that led to rapid increases in opioid misuse. The emergence of dangerous new synthetic drugs, often mixed into supplies of heroin or other illicit drugs and trafficked through global illicit supply chains, has now morphed this crisis into an ever more deadly phenomenon with complex transnational linkages. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that more than 72,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2017. Over forty percent of these deaths involved synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Between 2012 and 2016, the number of overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids increased by nearly 640 percent, and provisional data from 2017 suggest that this trend is continuing upwards. A confluence of dangerous new trends in the transnational production, sales, and trafficking of illicit drugs has contributed to this tragic climb in American deaths.