The CCP's Role In the Fentanyl Crisis

My testimony to the U.S. House Select Committee

This morning on Capitol Hill, the U.S. House Select Committee On the CCP presented an investigation entitled The CCP’s Role In the Fentanyl Crisis. I was asked to submit testimony for their report, which shows how the Chinese government incentivizes the production of illicit fentanyl ingredients for export. I was honored to be consulted and, as shown in the above video, my reporting was critical to their investigation. That said, I do not agree with all of the committee’s conclusions. Below is my full testimony.

Dear Chair Gallagher, Ranking Member Krishnamoorthi, and distinguished members of the Select Committee On the CCP,

In January, 2018, while reporting my book Fentanyl, Inc., I was the first journalist to go undercover inside Chinese fentanyl operations. Pretending to be a drug trafficker, I infiltrated a lab making fentanyl analogues and other new synthetic drugs in Shanghai. In Wuhan, I visited a company that, by my calculations, sold more fentanyl precursors than any other company in the world.

Fentanyl is the deadliest drug in American history, likely in the history of the world. Nearly 110,000 Americans died from drugs in 2022, the majority from fentanyl.

Chinese chemical companies, most of them operating legally, provide the bulk of the chemicals used to make fentanyl consumed illicitly in the United States, as well as the bulk of the other novel psychoactive substances taken recreationally here. I traveled to China to understand how these companies operate, and what role the government plays in their proliferation. I determined that not only did the government support these companies through a variety of incentives (including grants and subsidies) but also encouraged the export of fentanyl and other dangerous drugs through the tax code.

I started my research by simply googling “Buy fentanyl in China.” Hundreds of company websites came up, and so I created a fake avatar and chatted with salespeople and lab owners on Skype. We discussed prices and shipping methods, and I eventually encountered a lab owner from Shanghai named Dowson Li, who operated a company called Chemsky. He invited me to visit his lab, and so I flew to China a few months later…