This week, President Trump spoke to China’s President Xi Jinping about his desire to impose an additional ten percent tariff on Chinese goods until the country makes a more concerted effort to curb the illegal fentanyl that is continually trafficked into the United States.
By now, everyone knows that China is flooding our country with fentanyl. An investigation by the Select Committee on the CCP concluded that the People’s Republic “subsidizes the manufacturing and export of illicit fentanyl materials,” “[h]olds ownership interest in several PRC companies tied to drug trafficking,” and (most notably) “[c]ensors content about domestic drug sales, but leaves export-focused narcotics content untouched.” They’re smart enough to keep fentanyl away from their own people but have no problem sending it across our borders to poison the blood of Americans.
The result has been comparable to a nuclear attack. Over a quarter of a million Americans died of fentanyl overdoses between 2018 and 2023, the equivalent of wiping out the entire population of Toledo, Ohio, in just five years. At the same rate, ten years would yield a body count the size of Kansas City, while 15 would kill everyone in Seattle.
But fentanyl isn’t the only bioweapon the CCP has unleashed on the U.S. while shielding their own citizens from its toxic effects.
China has around 300 million smokers, and between taxes and profits, the state tobacco monopoly brings in around seven percent of government revenue.
Obviously, this comes with trade-offs. Dependence on tobacco money makes the CCP less willing to pursue anti-smoking policies. According to the World Health Organization, global smoking rates have dropped 11 percent since 2000, while China’s are down by just one percent. They know this will cause long-term health problems that could prove costly, but for now (to borrow a phrase from Thomas Jefferson), they’re holding a wolf by the ears — they can “neither hold him nor safely let him go.”
Still, when it comes to their own people, the CCP does draw the line somewhere. As of October 2022, the Chinese government bans domestic sales of e-cigarettes that “flavor the product to be attractive to minors.” In China, you can have a vape in any flavor as long as that flavor is tobacco.
When it comes to Americans, the CCP has no such compunctions. For years, they’ve been flooding our country with flavored vape products, including popular brands like Elf Bar. In an attempt to circumvent the FDA’s 2020 ban on flavored e-liquid “pods,” these products are disposable rather than refillable, but the agency still considers them illegal. They’ve even threatened stores that carry these products and worked with customs officials to seize them at ports of entry. Enforcement isn’t working though. Seven Chinese-owned vape companies now control 40 percent of the U.S. market for disposable e-cigarettes. These products are unapproved and unregulated. We literally don’t know what our children are inhaling.
Not only is the U.S. failing to stop China from poisoning us, but we’re actively making it worse, as the International Trade Commission is considering removing legal, American-made vaping products from the marketplace.
Taking these products off the market could have devastating effects on public health. Vape products are proven to be less harmful than cigarettes and twice as effective at helping smokers quit compared to other products like patches or gum. If you’re a vaper, a ban on these products would leave you with just two options: seek out illegal Chinese vapes or go back to smoking menthol cigarettes. Neither is optimal, especially considering that African Americans — a major customer base for menthol-flavored tobacco products — already have worse health outcomes than the rest of the population.
It would be naive to expect the Chinese Communist Party to care about vulnerable populations in this country. Like Don Zaluchi from “The Godfather,” they shrug and say, “Let them lose their souls.” The bigger problem is that our own government appears to be letting it happen.
Fortunately, this will all change on January 20th when President Trump is sworn into office again. Unlike the current administration, he has made taking on the uses and abuses of the CCP a top priority — and, with meetings like the one he held this week with Jinping, he has already started the process.
Gone will soon be the days when CCP-connected smugglers put the health of Americans (especially its teens) in harm’s way. And irrespective of our political ideologies, that’s something we all should be able to get behind.
Paul Boardman is chairman of the Decouple China Political Action Committee.
