William de Berg, The New Opium War: Revenge of the Middle Kingdom?
William de Berg
In the middle of the 19th-Century, Great Britain and its East India Tea Company had a major problem: Exports from China (silk, porcelain, tea, etc.) were worth much more than the imports to the Middle Kingdom (mainly precious metals). So, the British created an import market by selling opium to the Chinese masses, whose growing addictions alarmed the Chinese emperors. Issuing edicts and burning warehouses didn’t sit well with the British, who along with the French ended up sending their navies upriver to capture the capital cities of Canton, Nanjing, and Beijing. This led to over a century of humiliation for imperial China and the ceding of key ports such as Hong Kong and Shanghai to Western powers. The United States did not participate directly in the military subjugation of China, but American clipper ships did partake in the opium trade, creating fabulous wealth among mainly New Englanders, including Jacob Astor (America’s first multimillionaire), John and Robert Forbes (ancestor of presidential candidate and later Secretary of State John Forbes Kerry), and Warren Delano, Jr., grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.[1]
There is a new, much more dangerous opium war currently being waged, but this time it is the United States that is being attacked. The new weapon is the synthetic opioid fentanyl, over 50 times more potent than heroin. Its raw materials come mainly from China, from where it is sent to Mexico for manufacturing and transport across the porous U.S. southern border.[2] Fentanyl not only is much more addictive but immensely more deadly than the opiates forced on China in the 19th Century. Overdose deaths due to fentanyl alone rose from 1600 in 2012 to over 70,000 in 2021, thereby becoming the leading cause of death of Americans between the ages of 18 and 45.[3] In 2022—for which final statistics are still unavailable—fentanyl seizures all across the nation attest to its phenomenal lethality. In just one of those busts, in Nebraska, enough fentanyl to kill 26 million Americans was seized.[4]
If an individual were caught with a live hydrogen bomb capable of killing even a fraction of that number of Americans, mass panic in the streets along with threats of nuclear retaliation would ensue. COVID-19, which the CDC now admits only caused 5% of the American deaths originally attributed to it (less than the most recent annual fentanyl overdose total)[5] led to draconian lockdowns, mass coercion, and unprecedented fear among the general public. But the media and government responses to the fentanyl epidemic? Not even close. There has been no serious effort to control the southern border (where most fentanyl enters the U.S. and an estimated 600,000 immigrants entered illegally in 2022), no serious legislation to up the penalties for fentanyl distribution (it can lead to only a few years behind bars in some states), and no serious sanctions for those nations allowing the production and transport of fentanyl (China and Mexico). The U.S. Congress readily forked over $100+ billion in 2022 to fund a war in Ukraine that involves a nonexistent security threat to the U.S., but only a tiny fraction of that funding (less than $3 billion in total) was appropriated for the Drug Enforcement Agency in 2022.[7]
The fentanyl epidemic has all the hallmarks of a war to take down America’s youth, not just an economic boon to the cartels. First, any drug that causes as many overdose deaths as fentanyl makes no economic sense because it quickly kills off the very people that could continue to purchase it if they were only addicted. Second, the sale of fentanyl is extremely deceptive, with many unwittingly overdosing on fentanyl-laced recreational drugs such as marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine, and methamphetamine and even prescription drugs such as Adderall and Percocet.[8] Third, in contrast to the fentanyl scourge in the U.S. and parts of Western Europe, China itself remains relatively unscathed, with far fewer addicts per capita than in the U.S. due to its draconian domestic drug possession laws. China can exert tough control over illicit drug exports when it suits its geopolitical needs [9], but not only has China been lax in shutting down fentanyl production [9] but it actually mocks the U.S. for its fentanyl crisis.[10]
The 21st-century fentanyl war reversed the roles of perpetrators and victims (West vs. China in the opium wars; China/Mexico vs. U.S./West in the fentanyl war), but the paramount difference between the two wars is that the Middle Kingdom, despite its inferior military technology, at least tried to stand up against the Western imperialists in the 19th century. In contrast, the current U.S. government is hardly even putting up a fight against the fentanyl threat. To do so would mean 1) placing tough sanctions on China; 2) building an impregnable wall on the Mexican border replate with drone aircraft and ground-penetrating radar; and 3) deploying the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy to interdict all vehicles and ships entering ports and border crossings. The U.S. currently has over 150 bases and hundreds of thousands of troops and sailors across the globe stationed against largely phantom enemies. But on the southern border and in our ports—the only places where the U.S. is truly facing an existential threat—there are none.
So why is the U.S. unwilling to fight? Is it because fentanyl deaths drip in a few thousand at a time, unlike the more fearsome (though unlikely) prospects of a nuclear holocaust or true global pandemic that could kill millions in one fell swoop? Is it because the elites are mistakenly nonchalant about their own families being decimated by fentanyl? Is it that the greed of American businessmen and financial elites to acquire cheap labor and products from south of the border and sino-dollars from Asia to power our large banks and investment houses treats fentanyl deaths as mere collateral damage? Or is it because the major financial ties to China by the families of leading politicians in the U.S. have either blinded or corrupted them into allowing the fentanyl trade to thrive?
Someone at the highest levels of American power needs to start providing answers and soon. Or those hundreds of thousands of current dead will turn into a million or more in the coming decade as the fentanyl turns from a quasi-war into a holocaust.
William de Berg is the pen name of an American scientist and author of four conspiracy/truther fiction novels: Serpent and Savior, White Spiritual Boy, Divided We Stand, and Shield Down.
References
[1] https://www.alternet.org/2015/06/5-elite-families-fortunes-opium-trade
[2] https://thenewamerican.com/under-biden-cartels-china-working-together-to-flood-us-with-fentanyl; https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-role-in-the-us-fentanyl-epidemic-152338423.html
[3] https://www.foxnews.com/us/fentanyl-overdoses-leading-cause-death-adults
[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44244688
[6] https://www.newsweek.com/southern-us-border-migrants-gotaways-2022-1770201
[7] https://www.justice.gov/jmd/page/file/1399016/download
[8] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/17/politics/fentanyl-overdose-deaths-what-matters/index.html
[10] https://nypost.com/2022/11/29/china-rails-against-us-freedom-as-protest-crackdown-continues
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