K-STREET, 10,000 FEET: Inside the illicit vaping crisis: How China and Mexico’s cartels are poisoning America
THE LOWDOWN:
Illicit Chinese vapes and fentanyl are flooding into American communities, including schools, via networks colluding with Mexican drug cartels;
Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R., Texas) said she is “glad to have a partner in the White House who is working with us to dismantle this harmful network”;
The CCP’s international gambit has a historical element to it, drawing from China’s “Century of Humiliation” following the Opium Wars with the West.
It is impossible to find someone unaffected by the opioid crisis in America. Be it family, friend, spouse, child, or acquaintance, we all know someone harmed by this scourge that has been killing our neighbors for nearly a decade now.
Just as the opioid crisis crosses party lines, the illicit vape market does the same. Children are being targeted with addictive chemicals masked with youth-enticing flavors, creating a dependent market on illegal nicotine that spreads through middle and high schools like a voracious plague. These vapes are hard to quit and easy to hide from parental supervision, creating a perfect storm for another addiction crisis to take hold in America.
At some point, we have to ask ourselves: is this intentional? And, as time’s arrow marches forward, we find more and more evidence pointing to that inquiry to be true. Illicit supply chains in China are not only pumping fentanyl and other dangerous opioids into our nation and fueling a historic drug crisis the world has never seen before, but also illicit nicotine vapes being used by children. In fact, these vapes are banned in China — but that doesn’t mean the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) won’t sell them abroad, including in America.
According to reports, “vapes are becoming an increasingly significant part of Mexican cartels' business portfolios” with cartels “mandating business owners” in Mexico to sell Chinese vapes called iJoy Bar. iJoy Bar is a Chinese company started by Wang Xizhi, the “martial arts master” founder and billionaire who also serves as the vice president of the Electronic Cigarette Association of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce (ECCC). The ECCC serves as a “bridge between enterprises in the (Chinese) domestic vaping industry and regulatory authorities” within the CCP. iJoy vapes aren’t only available in Mexico, but are being distributed and sold across the United States in flavors such as “Tropical Rainbow Blast.” In fact, recent law enforcement activity against major distributors Demand Vape, Safa Goods and Midwest Goods for selling illicit vapes (such as iJoy) has shed new light on the Chinese illicit vape distribution network in the United States that seems to mirror those of the cartel distribution networks in Mexico.
This is par for the course for China, however, according to the Brookings Institute think tank. Internal and international organized crime expert Vanda Felbab-Brown said in an October 2024 podcast that China offers help to countries it “has good relations or with whom it wants to build good relations,” extending its “law enforcement and counter-narcotics cooperation” to said nations. However, if you are not a nation that China likes or whose relationships break down, then you don’t get their help.
“So, when China announced in 2022, no more cooperation with the U.S., it acted very much according to its standard script,” Felbab-Brown said in the podcast. She also noted that China’s “counternarcotics and law enforcement cooperation are driven and subordinated to its geostrategic objectives.”
To put it plainly: China supplies illicit narcotics to other countries around the world to create a crisis. Then, the CCP leverages its counter-narcotic and law enforcement capabilities to get things they want and, if they don’t like your country, it is left to rot from the inside out.
But this plan is not accomplished by the CCP alone — Mexican drug cartels act as the cooks and mules for the illicit Chinese products, bringing them into America after crafting them across the border via illegal immigration. It’s easy for the cartels to get the materials to craft fentanyl, at that, with China being the primary source of the opioid’s precursor chemicals.
Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R., Texas) warned the Reporter that “Communist China will stop at nothing to destroy America, finding new ways to subsidize and traffick deadly fentanyl into our country to poison our citizens.”
“From providing fentanyl precursor chemicals to laundering blood money for Mexican drug cartels, the CCP is deeply embedded in every aspect of illicit fentanyl trafficking,” Van Duyne said. “With more than 200,000 Americans killed by this deadly drug during the last administration, I’m glad to have a partner in the White House who is working with us to dismantle this harmful network.”
“The CCP is not our friend — they are and will hurt Americans in any way they can, including aiding the spread of deadly fentanyl into our country,” Rep. Austin Scott (R., Ga.) told the Reporter.
There is also a historical basis for China’s opioid gambit: the 1800s Opium Wars with the West. The First Opium War took place between Great Britain and China amid a trade imbalance between the two powers. The British penchant for porcelain, silk, and tea put China in a very advantageous position economically, which Britain was not happy about.
Britain responded by flooding the Chinese market with opium, sparking an addiction crisis in the Qing Dynasty. China responded by destroying British opium stockpiles in Canton in 1839, sparking a military response from the British Empire. The Treaty of Nanking saw the first war conclude in 1842 before the Second Opium War kicked off — this time featuring France — and saw China face more military defeats, culminating in trade policies benefiting the West as well as the legalization of the opium trade.
These wars and subsequent economic and military concessions to the West had a profound impact on Chinese society. The Opium Wars marked the beginning of a period of Chinese history known in the communist country as the “Century of Humiliation.”
According to then-CNA China research analyst Dr. Alison Kaufman’s March 2011 testimony to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), the Century of Humiliation “is thought by many Chinese today to provide historical lessons that are taken as indicative of how strong Western powers tend to behave toward China.” Kaufman also said that the Chinese government considers the end of the Century of Humiliation to be in 1949 — after the communists won the Chinese Civil War.
Thecombination of China’s very personal history battling nationwide drug addiction coupled with a global chip on its shoulder against the West are likely heavy contributors to China’s global strategy of getting other nations hooked on illicit drugs to get the things the CCP wants.