China’s History Linked to the US Fentanyl Crisis
A fentanyl drug crisis is exploding all over the world and for those who know the history of China, it is easy to understand that it is not happening by accident.
In the US alone, drug deaths are expected to hit a record high, claiming well over 1.2 million lives by the end of this decade. I have seen this drug crisis and deaths first hand, as I have a cousin who was addicted to the synthetic drug and was killed in a knife stabbing.
Fentanyl is the most dangerous illicit drug ever concocted and has turned entire blocks of America’s major cities into war zones and if you think it is not happening on purpose, then you do not know your history.
Though there are many bad actors that are responsible for the drug crisis like smugglers, dealers, cartels, failed border security, etc, there is one major player, without whom the entire fentanyl drug trade would collapse overnight – China.
According to Ben Westhoff, the author of “Fentanyl Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating The Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic,” China is openly making this illegal drug specifically to export illegally to other countries. He joins me in a podcast to talk about the current drug epidemic and its roots in China.
According to the BTJ podcast, China operates the production of the opiate in business-like labs with offices and marketing departments that anyone can go and see.
It seems that the Chinese government is doing it on purpose, but why?
China is a country with a long history and an even longer memory. Though the world has forgotten the two Opium Wars of 1839 and 1860, the Chinese have not. China lost Hong Kong, Shanghai, and control over other parts of their country when British warships forced China to allow the sale of opium at gunpoint.
The Chinese had large portions of their population addicted to drugs and there was nothing that they could do to stop it. When they tried, they were slaughtered in battle.
The British Empire didn’t want anything interfering with their drug profits, so when the first Protestant missionary, Robert Morrison, wanted to travel from England to China, there wasn’t a boat that would legally take him, because the British didn’t want missionaries getting Chinese interested in Jesus instead of opium. Instead, as we share in our new book coming out in November, BURY ME IN CHINA, Robert Morrison had to first take a boat to America and from America, sail to China.
Now it seems that China has turned the tables, but maybe not in the way that they had envisioned. Missionaries to China fought to end the opium addictions in China in the 1800 and 1900s and today, China’s missionaries are needed to end the fentanyl addiction abroad.
