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Sen. Ernst accuses China of ‘intentionally poisoning’ Americans with fentanyl, says it’s time to ‘push back’

February 12, 2023 | | Print Article

By failing to break supply chain networks that deliver “precursor chemicals” to Mexican cartels, Republican Senator Joni Ernst (Iowa) says China is “intentionally poisoning” Americans with the deadly synthetic opiate, fentanyl.

“The Chinese are selling these precursor chemicals into Mexico. Then the Mexican cartels are working on making the fentanyl and distributing up into the United States,” Ernst told CBS News senior investigative correspondent Catherine Herridge in an interview that aired Friday on the network’s streaming service.

Ernst, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, recently led a bicameral visit to the California-Mexico border.

Upon her return, she renewed “two of her efforts to increase consequences for individuals who aid and abet cartel activity or distribute fentanyl,” according to a press release from the Senator’s office.

“Ernst’s bill, the Transnational Criminal Organization Illicit Spotter Prevention and Elimination Act, would harshen penalties on spotters by increasing fines and imposing a maximum prison time of 10 years on those convicted of helping cartels,” the release explains.

She is also joining Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and reintroducing the Felony Murder for Deadly Fentanyl Distribution Act. The legislation would make “the distribution of fentanyl resulting in death punishable by federal felony murder charges.”

The precursor chemicals are making their way into Mexico, Ernst claims, with the Chinese Communist Party’s tacit approval.

Based on briefings she’s received, Ernst told Herridge, “I think that the Chinese are intentionally poisoning  America.”

“And of course, the Chinese don’t want to assist us with this,” she added.

“When we see an adversary like China poisoning our communities, it’s very disconcerting,” Ernst said. “So we have to educate the American people. We have to work with our Mexican counterparts to push back against the cartel and the Chinese. We can’t continue to lose our youth to this fentanyl epidemic. It is extremely important that we push back.”

The sheer scope of the fentanyl crisis is difficult to wrap one’s brain around.

“In 2022, the Drug Enforcement Administration seized enough fentanyl to kill every American — more than 50 million fentanyl-laced pills and over 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder,” BBC News reported last December.

“A drug epidemic, with more than enough fentanyl seized to kill every American,” Ernst tweeted on Tuesday.


As BizPac Review reported on Monday, three young children attending Carrollton-Farmers Branch schools near Dallas died from a fentanyl overdose and six others were hospitalized. The drugs were traced back to a local home that provided kids with the drugs so they could sell them later to their fellow students.

“To deal fentanyl is to knowingly imperil lives. To deal fentanyl to minors — naive middle and high school students — is to shatter futures,” U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Leigha Simonton told The Dallas Morning News.

During his State of the Union address, President Biden said fentanyl “is killing more than 70,000 Americans a year.”

The disturbing stat was met with scorn as a male heckler hollared, “It’s your fault!”

According to Ernst, Biden is culpable for allowing the border with Mexico to remain open.

“An open border is a drug lord’s dream. It leaves Americans vulnerable to cartels, the criminals who aid them, and those who distribute deadly drugs,” her office quoted her as saying. “The criminals profiting from this administration’s border crisis and the fentanyl epidemic need to face consequences that match their crimes, which is what my efforts do.”

Republished with permission from American Wire News Service

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