Tablets believed to be laced with fentanyl are displayed at the Drug Enforcement Administration Northeast Regional Laboratory in New York. (Photo by DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images)
OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 10:16 AM PT – Monday, December 20, 2021
The Biden administration is finally looking to crackdown on the nation’s fentanyl crisis. It seems to be picking up the pace in his efforts to get illicit drugs coming in through the southern border out of America.
On Sunday, Biden’s administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency, Anne Milgram, sounded the alarm on fentanyl-laced products plaguing the nation. She said nefarious Chinese actors are sending chemicals to Mexican drug cartels to make the synthetic drug and the cartels are mass producing fentanyl-laced products as well as trafficking them into the U.S.
“Right now those chemicals are largely sourced from China, they’re going to the Mexican criminal drug cartels that are then mass producing, often at an industrial scale, fentanyl,” Milgram explained. “Tiny, tiny amounts can be deadly. The CDC reports that two milligrams can be a deadly dose…the amount that could fit on the tip of your pen.”
Additionally, Milgram stressed cartels are falsely advertising fentanyl products as actual prescription drugs through a massive social media campaign. These efforts, the DEA chief warned, have reached millions of Americans.
“So we know every single day across America that drugs are being sold on social media sites: Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook,” she noted. “When you go on your smartphone, and all of use have smartphones today…they could be inside a child’s bedroom, inside a car, wherever you are, those traffickers are there too.”
The DEA chief also pointed to recent executive orders signed by Joe Biden giving the U.S. Treasury Department authority to sanction foreign actors who contribute to illicit drug trafficking. The order targets countries in China who are producing chemicals to make fentanyl as well as gangs in Mexico, Colombia and Brazil who manufacture and distribute fentanyl products.
Milgram touted the DEA and DOJ’s efforts to bring a Chinese national to justice who is allegedly one of the world’s largest distributors of steroids and fentanyl precursor drugs. Federal agents found more than $2 million worth of Bitcoin in the suspect’s possession, which they say is linked to his illicit activities. The DOJ is offering $5 million to anyone who can provide information leading to his arrest or evidence that can help prosecutors with their case.
However, several GOP critics have called out the Biden administration for being late to the game. Earlier this month, North Carolina Rep. Greg Murphy said the soaring deaths in fentanyl overdoses is directly linked to Biden’s open border policies.
Additionally, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Biden has blood on his hands, prompting him and other states to take measures into their own hands.
“We’re seeing something devastating that the Biden administration is not doing enough to respond to and that is the enormous amount of the deadly drug fentanyl that is coming across our border,” Abbott stated. “We have already apprehended enough fentanyl to kill every man, woman and child in Texas, California, New York, Illinois and Florida combined.”
In the meantime, the Treasury Department has yet to use its newly designated power to sanction. However, several border states, including Democrat-run California, are taking matters into their own hands to stop fentanyl from coming through the U.S. southern border.
According to reports, this year more than 100,000 Americans have died from fentanyl overdoses and is the leading cause of death among Americans 18-to-45-years old.
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