The fentanyl crisis is a national security risk unlike anything the US has ever experienced before, and President Joe Biden and malevolent foreign actors are responsible for the crisis, former Drug Enforcement Agency special operations chief Derek Maltz has alleged.
“This [is] gross negligence by Joe Biden and the administration, there’s mass poisonings all over the country, I worked with those families every day that you had on the show, I know their stories personally,” Maltz said, speaking to Fox News host Dan Bongino on Saturday.
“The one kid, Zach, was gonna go to Stanford or UCLA. He took a pill, he died. The parents found him dead in the bedroom. Unfortunately this is happening all too often. 9,000 [people] a month,” Maltz said.
Pointing out that the Biden administration has admitted that the illicit narcotics crisis facing America is an extraordinary threat to national security, the retired DEA agent argued that if the administration recognizes the problem, “a logical question is: why in the hell is the border wide open?”
“It’s coming from these cartels distributing the poisonous fentanyl, the methamphetamine, the cocaine in our country that’s killing in our kids. And then they’re buying property in America. It’s insanity. It’s really scary and it’s a national security threat like we haven’t seen,” Maltz said.
The former DEA agent went on to allege that China is heavily involved in the fentanyl crisis, and that Beijing is “trying to destabilize our society, our country…killing off the future generation, it’s deliberate. But now they’re getting smart, they’re using the Mexican cartels as the proxy to do the dirty work.”
Maltz did not provide any evidence to back up his allegations.
US officials, lawmakers, and media have repeatedly accused the People’s Republic of “deliberately” flooding America with fentanyl and the precursors required to make the drug. Late last year, after a congressional report blamed Beijing for America’s synthetic opioid crisis, the Chinese Embassy in Washington called on officials to look inward to find the true source of the crisis.
“It is hoped that the US side will face up to its own problems, come up with practical solutions, and learn from international experience to safeguard the health and wellbeing of the American people. We sincerely hope that the United States can solve its opioid abuse crisis at an early date,” an embassy spokesperson said.
The embassy expressed disdain over US officials and the media’s “highly irresponsible and utterly false” claims about the crisis’ supposed Chinese ties, and pointed to the People’s Republic’s tough restrictions on more than half-a-dozen fentanyl substances and precursor chemicals.
US drug overdose deaths reached over 107,000 people in 2021, with fentanyl and other synthetic opioids accounting for 71,000 of them. Deaths from the powerful painkiller’s use began to climb in the mid-2010s as the drug gradually began to replace other narcotics such as heroin thanks to its easy availability, robust cost-to-profit ratio, and potency. Originally developed as a painkiller for surgery, fentanyl is estimated to be some 100 times more powerful than morphine, and 50 times stronger than heroin. Despite the dangers associated with the drug, it continues to be prescribed by US doctors as a pain medication, with over one million prescriptions written every year.
The drug’s use and overdose deaths sparked dramatically amid the 2020 coronavirus lockdowns, and have continued their upward climb thanks to the crisis at the US southern border, with smugglers taking advantage of the surge in illegal immigration to ramp up drug trafficking.
In April, authorities in Texas reported that the state’s "Operation Lone Star" anti-illegal immigration, people- and drug-smuggling campaign had netted the equivalent of over 300 million lethal doses of fentanyl over a one-year period.