(IntegrityTimes.com) – In 2022 the Biden administration made a commitment to combat illegal drug trafficking with their National Drug Control Strategy. The aim of the strategy was to address untreated drug addiction and improve law enforcement’s ability to go after drug traffickers.
The administration has also announced plans to disrupt the profits from the illegal drug trade by levying sanctions against top leaders and associates of the Mexican drug cartel La Nueva Familia Michoacana. Despite their efforts statistics indicate that drug trafficking remains on the rise, and many everyday Americans are negatively impacted by it.
According to recent reports two Mexican drug cartels, Sinaloa and Jalisco squashed their competition in 2024. They are known for their violence and American is seeing the effects of their prominence. While there has been some data that suggests drug overdose deaths have been going down but estimates suggest that overdose deaths in 2023 were still be about twice as high as they were five years earlier. According to data gathered by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics 107,500 people died from a drug overdose in 2023.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has recently discovered an alliance between the Sinaloa Cartel and money launderers tied to Chinese underground banking. This collaboration has laundered more than $50 million in drug proceeds. The DEA’s report also points out that China is the main source of chemicals that Mexican cartels use to make fentanyl, which adds another layer to this challenging problem. Chinese officials have denied that their country may be a major part of the international fentanyl smuggling trade although there is much evidence that it is.
The DEA’s 2024 national drug threat assessment showed fentanyl is the most urgent drug threat that the U.S. is currently facing. They noted that the amount of fentanyl that had been seized has nearly doubled over the past two years. Dr. Katherine Keyes, a professor at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health has called the number of deaths due to fentanyl “alarmingly high”. However, Keyes remains optimistic, saying that there are some hopeful trends in public policies to address the issue. It is clear though, that there is much more to be done to protect people from the harm that comes with the illegal drug trafficking trade.
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