Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy: Chinese Opioids Flooding Country a National Security Threat
by EDWIN MORA
BreitBart.com
19 Dec 2017
U.S. President Donald Trump’s newly unveiled National Security Strategy (NSS) has deemed Latin American drug cartels who smuggle heroin and Chinese traffickers of the synthetic opioid fentanyl a threat to the United States for killing “tens of thousands of Americans each year.”
The NSS notes:
The illicit opioid epidemic, fed by drug cartels as well as Chinese fentanyl traffickers, kills tens of thousands of Americans each year. These organizations weaken our allies and partners too, by corrupting and undermining democratic institutions.
TCOs [transnational criminal organizations] are motivated by profit, power, and political influence. They exploit weak governance and enable other national security threats, including terrorist organizations. In addition, some state adversaries use TCOs as instruments of national power, offering them territorial sanctuary where they are free to conduct unattributable cyber intrusions, sabotage, theft, and political subversion.
The U.S. military and other experts have affiliated Latin American drug cartels with the Sunni al-Qaeda jihadist organization and Iran’s narco-terrorist proxy Hezbollah.
In 2016, more people died from drug use in the United States alone than were killed by terrorist groups across the world, Breitbart News determined using federal government data.
Trump has declared the illicit opioid epidemic currently gripping the United States a public health emergency, ordering his administration to provide immediate assistance to communities struggling with addiction to opium-based heroin, synthetic fentanyl, and other opiates.
Trump’s NSS pledges:
We will deny TCOs the ability to harm Americans. We will support public health efforts to halt the growth of illicit drug use in the United States, expand national and community-based prevention efforts, increase access to evidenced-based treatment for addiction, improve prescription drug monitoring, and provide training on substance use disorders for medical personnel.
While Latin American cartels are responsible for bringing most of the heroin into the United States, China is considered the top source of fentanyl in this country, federal data shows.
During his visit to China this year, Trump urged Chinese counterpart President Xi Jinping to combat the influx of fentanyl from China. President Xi reportedly agreed.
The Trump administration’s NSS describes “criminal cartels … bringing drugs and danger into our communities” as a threat that has proliferated in recent years, along with rogue regimes developing nuclear weapons, rival global powers, and radical Islamist terror groups.
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