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asiatimes  |  With key assistance from China, Mexico is keeping at crisis level the flow of fentanyl into the United States.

At least 70,000 Americans, mostly between the ages of 18 and 35, have died after ingesting fentanyl pills so far this year. That’s close to the 71,000 dead out of more than 100,000 drug fatalities in 2021 and a big jump from 57,000 deaths the year before. Millions of pills have illicitly passed through the US southern border in recent years.

In 2020, US President Joe Biden declared a “whole of government” campaign to stem the opiate flood into the country. However, the illicit flood of drugs continues unabated due to Washington’s inability to persuade – or pressure – China and Mexico to halt their roles in it. In particular:

• China won’t stop criminal gangs from providing the chemicals used in Mexico to manufacture fentanyl.
• Mexico won’t fully crack down on illicit industries that make and transfer the finished product to the US.

Relations between Mexico and the United States have long stumbled over differing views of the cross-border drug problem. Mexico traditionally blames America’s insatiable appetite for narcotics, while the US regards Mexico as irretrievably crippled by massive corruption that lets criminal narcotics traffic flourish.

Almost two years into his term, Biden has fashioned an excuse to explain the massive traffic: Victims of drug use are afraid to acknowledge their addiction.

“We’re looking at continuing to make progress because we know there’s still a ways to go,” Biden said Thursday.

“We’re not going to let stigma drive us anymore,” he added. “We’re going to go where we need to go to help people thrive.”

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkus has reassuredly claimed that the border is “secure.”

Taking a less boastful view, Drug Enforcement Administration chief Anne Milgram said the administration had been overly focused on heroin commerce, even as Mexican traffickers made and shipped more fentanyl than heroin. “It is a new, deeper, more deadly threat than we have ever seen, and I don’t think that the full extent of that harm was immediately seen,” she said.

Unable to get sufficient help from either Mexico or China to stem the flow, the Biden administration instead is focusing on educational efforts to curb drug use. Rahul Gupta, director of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, said the government is concentrating on “expanding care” for addicts and on taking “harm reduction” measures to expand access to medical counseling and care.