Sec. 2. Findings
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Congress makes the following findings: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that from June 2017 through June 2018 more than 48,000 people in the United States died from an opioid overdose, with synthetic opioids (excluding methadone), contributing to a record 31,500 overdose deaths. While drug overdose deaths from methadone, semi-synthetic opioids, and heroin have decreased in recent months, overdose deaths from synthetic opioids have continued to increase.
The objective of preventing the proliferation of synthetic 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 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.
In 2015, Mexican heroin accounted for 93 percent of the total weight of heroin seized in the United States, transported to the United States by transnational criminal organizations that maintain territorial influence over large regions in Mexico and remain the greatest criminal drug threat to the United States. 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.
Insufficient regulation of synthetic opioid production and export and insufficient law enforcement efforts to combat opioid trafficking in the People’s Republic of China and Mexico continue to contribute to a flood of opioids 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, precision economic and financial sanctions policy tools are needed to address the flow of synthetic opioids.
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