Biden Administration Launches New Strike Force to Combat Fentanyl Trafficking to US

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – The Biden administration announced Monday it is launching a new strike force to fight the international trafficking of fentanyl into the U.S., a powerful opioid at the center of a devastating addiction crisis in the United States, the Washington Times reports.

The Treasury Department announced the new force, known as the Counter-Fentanyl Strike Force, on Monday, the Times reports. The force will bring together intelligence and personnel from across the Treasury Department, including from its sanctions and intelligence branches and the IRS Criminal Investigations office.

Among other matters, the strike force will analyze the financial flows of trafficking, the Times said.

China and Mexico are the primary countries from which fentanyl and the precursor materials required to make it are trafficked to the US, the Times notes. Monday’s announcement comes as China, too, intensifies its efforts to halt the illegal flow of fentanyl into the US: almost all the precursor materials come from China.

After discussing the issue during a rare meeting in California last month, President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that China will order its chemical companies to restrict shipments of the materials used to produce fentanyl to Latin America, the Times reports. China has also
resumed sharing information about suspected trafficking with an international database.

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