VOA misleads its audience… Again
Watch a video of this article here: https://youtu.be/S9AEiqcDK24
The USA’s Voice of America (VOA), misleadingly reports that, because of China and Mexico, Joe Biden will create a global coalition against one of the scourges of US society, Fentanyl.
Drug overdoses have killed more than a million people in the USA since 1999 and are increasing by 30% a year. At the current rate, one million people will die during this decade. The major cause is opioids and the major opioid is Fentanyl. VOA, along with other US media suggests that Fentanyl comes from China and Mexico. But does it?
This situation is so serious that senior Republican politicians are seeking legislation to bomb Mexico, their ally, neighbour and largest trading partner to end this problem. They have not, as yet, suggested bombing China!
Mexico recorded 1732 drug overdoses in 2020, the same year USA reached 100,000. Drug data in China is harder to find since drugs are strictly controlled but the UN reported in 2017 that 25,000 Chinese people had died of an overdose, a country with 4 times the population experiencing one quarter deaths.
All manufacturers know that domestic markets are easier to find than international, so, if countries allegedly manufacturing these drugs, don’t have addiction or overdose problems there must be something driving the products causing this plague into the USA.
Rising poverty and increasing homelessness contribute to drug problems and government policies create those societal problems. These problems manifest themselves in various ways. In 2020, the USA experienced 45,000 Suicides and 1.2 million attempted suicides; almost 1 million drug overdoses; 45,222 gun-deaths and 140,000 alcohol related deaths. Ominously, all the indicators are that these are increasing and responsibility for these failures is being abrogated by politicians who blame China as a matter of course, then these allegations are amplified by the likes of VOA.
In 2013 and again in 2014 China’s Ambassador to the USA stressed the need for cooperation. These were widely and positively reported in both Chinese and Western media and cooperation was going well. There was also less tension in 2017 when, in a spirit of cooperation, China welcomed the US Drug Enforcement Agency to open an office in Guangzhou, it was staffed with US lawmen and invited the DEA’s Acting administrator, Chuck Rosenberg, to visit.
Whilst accepting there is, or was a global problem, Chinese officials have always denied that China was the main source of Fentanyl, or its precursors, citing the fact that the US had, as they often do, made these allegations with absolutely no supporting evidence. Around the same period, the Diplomat magazine reported that despite problems, in China and US Narcotics trafficking, “there have always been fairly quiet and constructive engagements”. In fact, well before the days of official cooperation, in 2007, the DEA used media outlets such as CNN to praise China for “doing everything” we asked of them.
VOA clearly doesn’t like China, but it’s unacceptable to allege unsubstantiated criminal activity on the part of a nation due to those biases. The allegation that China is the source of either Fentanyl or the precursor chemicals is an example of this and they actually contradicted it in their own article.
Former Ambassador to Mexico, Anthony Wayne, is quoted by VOA as saying a key step is “tracking the shipping of the precursor chemicals”. That’s quite significant that this has never been done because, if it had there would be evidence. Surely VOA’s allegations should wait for the results of that investigation.
A right-wing think tank, the Brookings Institute waded into the debate in March 2022 with an article praising China for very strong drug enforcement in South East Asia but criticising China for lack of cooperation and for being selective about who it cooperates with.
Brooking’s report didn’t mention that the DEA had been working with China, officially, for almost 10 years, nor that China had, three-years earlier, officially registered control of all forms of Fentanyl and the two main precursor chemicals as a class of drugs rendering them illegal. Nor did it mention that this was a commitment made by President Xi at the 2018 G20 Summit and hailed by the White House as a “wonderful humanitarian gesture”.
None of the aforementioned articles included the fact that China, in 2019, sentenced a man to death for attempting to traffic Fentanyl to the USA. This matter was reported in the NY times, coupled with information that, despite those other widespread allegations, of 536 kilograms of fentanyl seized, only 5.87kg had come from China.
Nor do they mention that most of these drugs are shipped by Sinaloa, a Guatemalan cartel. Critical readers will note that China and Guatemala have no diplomatic relations, the Central American country is one of the few remaining nations to recognise Taiwan. More recently, the DEA, as reported in an Australian media outlet on 16th April, confirmed they were working on cases in 10 different countries, including China, a clear indication that the relationship between the two countries is not as strained at the operational level as it is at the diplomatic level.
The DEA’s own website praised the joint cooperation in 2017 but now, in 2023, it also alleges without evidence that the main sources are China and Mexico The report also suggests that another source of supply, in 2020, was India but the world’s largest “democracy” has never appeared in any media report even as a potential or minor source.
US media misleads its consumers about China in two ways:
By making negative allegations without evidence but supported by “unnamed sources” and presented with a degree of doubt by using words such as: likely; possible; may; or could;
And by omitting to report positive facts such as alternative sources in India or Guatemala; China’s working on limiting and controlling production; prosecuting and even executing traffickers; as well as over 10 years cooperation with DEA.
Reductions in cooperation between China and the USA are easily explained. Since the US legislated to allow a budget of $500 million, for negative coverage on China, nothing positive is ever seen in US media.
Many Chinese believe that Tibet has been misrepresented by US media for over 70 years; they also misrepresented events in Hong Kong, especially in 2019. Xinjiang’s extremism problems have been sensationalised and propagandised too. But it was how China’s One China Policy was ignored by Pelosi’s visit which was the last straw.
As a consequence of Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, China introduced 8 countermeasures. Three were cancellations of military cooperations, 4 were law and order suspensions, one was related to climate change. But it was the suspension of cooperation in counter-narcotics in response to US diplomatic insults and bullying which has US media concerned.
China has not changed its stance on drug control, it has not stopped seeking out and prosecuting drug dealers. In fact, quite the opposite of VOA’s unfounded allegations, China now claims it has the strongest drug control system in the world. US media just chooses to ignore that in an effort to deflect blame for their own problems.
