Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared on Fox Business Monday, directly blaming China for fueling the U.S. fentanyl crisis and detailing the various methods by which the deadly synthetic opioid and its precursors enter the United States.
Speaking on the program “Kudlow,” Bondi raised alarms over China’s role, particularly highlighting the origin of the chemicals used to make fentanyl.
“The precursors are all made in China,” Bondi stated.
She explained that these chemicals or the finished drug are then shipped via multiple routes, “It’s shipped to Mexico, into our country, or through, now, India, other routes, ports of entry, USPS, coming into our country, and they’re killing our kids, and it’s got to stop.”
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Bondi unequivocally held China responsible for contributing significantly to America’s deadliest drug epidemic, asserting that they are “flooding American streets with illicit fentanyl precursors.”
“People in China don’t get addicted to fentanyl. [That’s] because they’re shipping it to our country to kill 18-to 34-year-olds,” Bondi claimed. She cited grim statistics, stating, “75,000 Americans are dying every year because of fentanyl. It is a weapon of mass destruction, in my opinion. It’s destroying lives. It’s costing our taxpayers trillions of dollars. And it’s killing our kids, 18 to 34, [the] number one cause of death.”
To illustrate the potency of the drug, Bondi held up a single grain of table salt. “It takes one grain of fentanyl,” she warned. “You can barely see it… One grain is all it takes to kill an American citizen, and that’s what these people are doing.”
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Bondi also pointed to the danger of counterfeit pills and recreational drugs being laced with fentanyl, catching users unaware. “People don’t know they’re taking it. They think they’re taking a Xanax or an Adderall or doing cocaine or doing some recreational drug… yet it’s laced, and all it takes is one grain of this junk to kill you,” she said.
The discussion also touched upon a recently closed tariff loophole that the Trump administration targeted.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on April 2 to shut down the “de minimis” rule, which previously allowed shipments valued under $800 to bypass tariffs and avoid thorough customs inspections. In 2022, over 80% of U.S. imports qualified under this exemption, accounting for more than 1.3 billion packages processed by Customs.
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Federal agents have reported that traffickers increasingly exploited this loophole to smuggle synthetic drugs, including fentanyl.
Data from the National Center for Health Statistics shows that after Congress raised the de minimis threshold in 2016, fentanyl-related overdose deaths in the U.S. spiked by 350%.
While a significant portion of fentanyl in the U.S. enters via the southern border, precursors and finished drugs often originate in China and have increasingly been sent through these expedited de minimis shipping routes.
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