China Behind Soaring Fentanyl Use in American Workplaces

Fentanyl isn’t just killing Americans in back alleys and quiet suburbs now it’s creeping into the workplace, and China is at the center of the crisis.

A disturbing new analysis reveals that fentanyl use among American workers has doubled since 2020, with the synthetic opioid increasingly showing up in randomized workplace drug tests. Behind the scenes, Chinese chemical suppliers and their partners in Mexico’s drug cartels are fueling a supply chain of death, as U.S. leaders sound the alarm on what is beginning to look like chemical warfare.

“The Chinese are intentionally poisoning America,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) said last year. “This is a war and they’re not even hiding it.”

According to Quest Diagnostics, randomized workplace tests showed a 1.13% positivity rate for fentanyl in 2024, up from 0.91% in 2023. That’s a massive increase from just 0.5% in 2020, and experts say this is likely an undercount pre-employment screenings can be gamed, while random testing exposes real-time use.

Here's what’s happening behind the scenes:

• China is the primary supplier of precursor chemicals used in fentanyl production critical ingredients for synthesizing the deadly opioid.

• Mexican cartels serve as middlemen, manufacturing and trafficking fentanyl into the U.S., often in pill form or cut into other drugs.

• Cartel money is laundered through Chinese state-owned banks, with Chinese nationals on U.S. education visas reportedly involved in the laundering operations.

• The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) confirmed that cartels obtain chemicals from China using mislabeling, diversion from the pharmaceutical industry, and smuggling through legitimate shipments.

This is not an accidental crisis it’s deliberate, strategic, and lethal.

Former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr didn’t mince words when testifying before Congress earlier this year:

“Without China’s production and export of fentanyl and fentanyl precursors, there would be no fentanyl crisis in the United States and the mass slaughter would effectively stop.”

Author Peter Schweizer, who’s extensively researched the ties between China and global drug trade, calls China the “senior partner” in this deadly partnership. In his book Blood Money, he details how China’s state-linked infrastructure enables and benefits from the spread of fentanyl, while Mexican cartels carry out the dirty work on the ground.

The consequences are devastating, especially in sectors like construction, mining, and transportation, where physical labor and injury create a dangerous dependency loop on painkillers. With fentanyl now lacing counterfeit pills and street drugs, even casual or first-time users are at risk of sudden death.

To make matters worse, the Biden administration has failed to treat this as the national security emergency it is. The CCP continues exporting these precursors with virtually zero consequence because under weak leadership, China knows it can act with impunity.

This isn’t just a health crisis. It’s chemical warfare disguised as commerce. And every time another American overdoses on the job, Beijing gets exactly what it wants a weaker, more divided, and more dependent United States.

If we’re serious about ending the fentanyl epidemic, it starts with shutting down the Chinese pipeline and taking the gloves off with the cartels.

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