Packages travel on a conveyor belt for sorting at the main post office in Omaha, Nebraska.AP
WASHINGTON — China said Thursday it is ready to work with the United States in fighting illicit opioid shipments after congressional investigators found that Chinese opioid manufacturers exploit weak screening in the US Postal Service to ship large quantities of illegal drugs to American dealers.
“Anti-drug coordination is one of the highlights of China-US law enforcement cooperation,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular briefing. “We stand ready to work with the US to enhance our coordination in this field.”
In a yearlong probe published Wednesday, Senate investigators found that Chinese sellers, who openly market opioids such as fentanyl to US buyers, are pushing delivery through the US postal system. The sellers are taking advantage of a failure by the Postal Service to fully implement an electronic data system that would help authorities identify suspicious shipments.
At a time of massive growth in postal shipments from China due to e-commerce, the investigators found that the postal system received the electronic data on just over a third of all international packages, making more than 300 million packages in 2017 much harder to screen. Data in the Senate report shows no significant improvement during 2017 despite the urgency.
The US Postal Service said it has made dramatic progress in the last year in total packages with opioids seized by US Customs and Border Protection.
Modal TriggerA heroin user prepares to shoot up on the street in the South Bronx.Getty Images
“The Postal Service will continue to work tirelessly to address this serious societal issue,” spokesman David Partenheimer said in a statement.
He said implementing the use of electronic data is slowed by the need to negotiate with international partners, but the service is making progress.
The Senate probe matches many of the findings of a 2016 investigation by the Associated Press that detailed unchecked production in China of some of the world’s most dangerous drugs.
AP reporters found multiple sellers willing to ship carfentanil — an opioid used as an elephant tranquilizer that is so potent, it has been considered a chemical weapon. The sellers also offered advice on how to evade screening by US authorities.
Researchers on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations also contacted Chinese sellers directly. The sellers preferred payment in bitcoin.
Investigators traced the online sellers to seven US opioid deaths and 18 drug arrests. The Senate has cleared the report to be handed over to law enforcement.
In one case, the investigators traced orders from an online seller in China to a Michigan man who wired $200 in November 2016. The next month, he received a package from someone identified by the investigators as a Pennsylvania-based distributor. A day later, the Michigan man died of an overdose from drugs, including a chemical similar to fentanyl.
The huge influx of opioids has led to a wave of overdose deaths across the US in recent years. Republican Sen. Rob Portman, the subcommittee’s chairman, noted that fentanyl now kills more people in his home state than heroin.
“The federal government can, and must, act to shore up our defenses against this deadly drug and help save lives,” he said.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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