U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday suggested Beijing may be “deliberately” flooding America with the synthetic opioid fentanyl, in a “reverse” form of the mid-1800s Opium Wars that enfeebled China’s international standing. U.S. officials blame fentanyl for ravaging communities and causing the overdose deaths of tens of thousands of Americans a year. Mexican transnational criminal gangs source precursors for fentanyl from China and then smuggle the drug into the United States, the officials say.
In an interview at the State Department with Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Wednesday, Rubio said he believed China “could stop in a second” the outflows of precursors, but chose not to bother.