War on Drugs

DeSantis Pledges Mandatory Life Sentence for Targeting Children with Fentanyl Resembling Candy

Published

10 months ago

February 8, 2023

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is taking unprecedented measures to keep drugs away from our children. During a “Preserving Law & Order in Florida” press conference, DeSantis declared he would ““make it a first-degree felony to possess, sell or manufacture fentanyl or other controlled substances to look like candy.”

The move comes after children around the country have overdosed and in many cases died due to ingesting fentanyl purposely disguised as candy. The focus of the punishment is for targeting that type of fentanyl to children.

Those charged with the felony would face mandatory life sentence and a $1 million fine. DeSantis also pledged to add $20 million of local support funding for law enforcement to stop fentanyl’s illicit spread in his upcoming budget proposals.

“They will jam fentanyl into almost anything nowadays,” DeSantis said. “So they’ll actually do it and make it look like candy, that’s been dubbed ‘rainbow fentanyl” DeSantis explained.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) found 15,000 ‘Rainbow’ Fentanyl pills inside a toy LEGO box in New York City last September.

“This is really targeting our youngest and most vulnerable kids,” DeSantis stated. “This is not something that you can do and maybe you have some side effects but you get over it. The lights can go out with these fentanyl overdoses, and the chance of a fatality is much higher than with many other drugs.”

The Daily Caller writes: The governor referenced Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents at Arizona’s Nogales port of entry seizing more than 250,000 fentanyl pills, many of them multicolored and resembling candy, within two days in August. CBP Area Port Director Michael Humphries had predicted those pills “could be the start of a trend with Transnational Criminal Organizations targeting younger users.”

China

Biden to lift sanctions on China in exchange for third promise to combat fentanyl

Published

3 weeks ago

November 15, 2023

Sara Carter Staff

Reportedly President Joe Biden is making deals with Chinese President Xi Jinping to help improve anti-drug trafficking measures. China is one of the top fentanyl producers and distributors, culminating in a pandemic of fentanyl overdoses and deaths in the United States.

The Biden administration will be lifting sanctions on a Chinese government ministry, in exchange for bolstering anti-drug trafficking measures, Bloomberg reported. “We’re hoping to see some progress on that issue this coming week,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Monday, according to the New York Post. “That could then open the door to further cooperation on other issues where we aren’t just managing things, but we’re actually delivering tangible results.”

The Daily Caller News Foundation noted that should a deal materialize, it will be at least the third time that China has promised to get tough on fentanyl. In 2016, China agreed to increase counter-narcotics operations, and Xi again agreed to launch a crackdown in 2018. Nonetheless, China and Mexico are “the primary source countries for fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked directly into the United States,” according to a 2020 DEA intelligence report.

“China remains the primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked through international mail and express consignment operations environment, as well as the main source for all fentanyl-related substances trafficked into the United States.”

President Joe Biden and Xi are meeting for the first time in over a year during this week’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco. Sources familiar with the situation told Bloomberg that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will crack down on Chinese companies manufacturing chemical precursors for fentanyl in exchange for the U.S. lifting sanctions on the Ministry of Public Security’s Institute of Forensic Science, which the Commerce Department added to the Entity List in 2020 for “engaging in human rights violations and abuses” in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.