According to unnamed sources cited by The Wall Street Journal, China may propose cooperation on the fentanyl crisis as an “off-ramp from hostilities” to foster dialogue with the Trum administration. Potentially, China has a resource to tackle the North American fentanyl problem as its role in this crisis and market is essential. Reportedly, Chinese chemical companies export fentanyl precursors and provide consultations to Americans wishing to synthesize the drug on online forums.
China may hope for dialogue as the role of fentanyl was explicitly cited by Donald Trump when he motivated imposing the harshest tariffs on China, the only country not granted a 90-day tariff pause. The dialogue between China and the U.S. is not impossible, as recently Trump himself said, “it’s a natural thing to ask,” referring to asking China to assist in solving the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
Fentanyl crisis statistics
Terms like “fentanyl crisis” and “fentanyl epidemic” are no exaggeration. The word “tragedy” also fits.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid used medically as an anesthetic but far more potent than heroin or morphine. In the 2010s, recreational use of fentanyl exploded in North America, resulting in hundreds of overdose deaths daily. At the peak in 2022, the fatal overdoses on synthetic opioids (mostly fentanyl) reached nearly 80,000 in the U.S. alone.
In Canada, with its 5x lower population, the numbers are not as high as in the U.S. For instance, 2023 was marked with around 6,000 deaths related to fentanyl. However, if we look at the deaths per 100,000 of the population, we’ll see that Canada is close to the U.S.
Most of the victims of overdose are men under 45 years old, but the number of elders among fentanyl casualties is on the rise. The crisis affected both men and women of all ages, including preschoolers.
These numbers may seem too huge to realize the scale of the tragedy. To get a more vivid and striking idea of this epidemic’s deadliness, we may think that at the peak, it was killing one person per hour in Canada and one person every seven minutes in the U.S.
Although after 2022 both the U.S. and Canada saw a drop in fentanyl deadly overdoses, the epidemic scale is still damning. Council on Foreign Relations notes that the 2022 fentanyl death count is 10x bigger than the total casualties of the U.S. army in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined. Comparisons to wars don’t look misplaced. The death toll in the fentanyl crisis is in line with the number of deaths in the most dismaying military conflicts of the 2020s: in Sudan, Gaza, Yemen, and Ukraine.
Somehow, North America reached the point at which it has war-scale casualties, while it doesn’t participate in a war. Except for the U.S. trade war. Two countries subjected to the harshest tariffs are the key players in the fentanyl trade in America: China and Mexico. Another country that faced high tariffs is Canada. Fentanyl from Canadian Valerian Labs was a part of the problem too.
Source: https://crypto.news/
