Sec. 1702. Findings
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Congress makes the following findings: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that from September 2017 through September 2018 more than 48,200 people in the United States died from an opioid overdose, with synthetic opioids (excluding methadone), contributing to a record 31,900 overdose deaths. While drug overdose death estimates from methadone, semi-synthetic opioids, and heroin have decreased in recent months, overdose deaths from synthetic opioids have continued to increase.
Congress and the President have taken a number of actions to combat the demand for illicit opioids in the United States, including enacting into law the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act ( Public Law 115–271 ; 132 Stat. 3894). While new statutes and regulations have reduced the rate of opioid prescriptions in recent years, fully addressing the United States opioid crisis will involve dramatically restricting the foreign supply of illicit opioids. The People’s Republic of China is the world’s largest producer of illicit fentanyl, fentanyl analogues, and their immediate precursors.
From the People’s Republic of China, those substances are shipped primarily through express consignment carriers or international mail directly to the United States, or, alternatively, shipped directly to transnational criminal organizations in Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean. The United States and the People’s Republic of China, Mexico, and Canada have made important strides in combating the illicit flow of opioids through bilateral efforts of their respective law enforcement agencies.
The objective of preventing the proliferation of illicit opioids though existing multilateral and bilateral initiatives requires additional efforts to deny illicit actors the financial means to sustain their markets and distribution networks. The implementation on May 1, 2019, of the regulations of the People's Republic of China to schedule all fentanyl analogues as controlled substances is a major step in combating global opioid trafficking and represents a major achievement in United States-China law enforcement dialogues.
However, that step will effectively fulfill the commitment that President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China made to President Donald Trump at the Group of Twenty meeting in December 2018 only if the Government of the People's Republic of China devotes sufficient resources to full implementation and strict enforcement of the new regulations. The effective enforcement of the new regulations should result in diminished trafficking of illicit fentanyl originating from the People's Republic of China into the United States.
While the Department of the Treasury used the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act ( 21 U.S.C. 1901 et seq.) to sanction the first synthetic opioid trafficking entity in April 2018, additional economic and financial sanctions policy tools are needed to help combat the flow of synthetic opioids into the United States.
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- 132 Stat. 3894
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