[Senate Hearing 118-182]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                        S. Hrg. 118-182

                COUNTERING ILLICIT FENTANYL TRAFFICKING

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                     COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION
                               __________

                           FEBRUARY 15, 2023
                               __________

       Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations


                  [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


                  Available via http://www.govinfo.gov
                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                    
54-410 PDF               WASHINGTON : 2024   


                 COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS        

             ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey, Chairman        
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland           JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire          MARCO RUBIO, Florida
CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware         MITT ROMNEY, Utah
CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut        PETE RICKETTS, Nebraska
TIM KAINE, Virginia                    RAND PAUL, Kentucky
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon                   TODD YOUNG, Indiana
CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey             JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming
BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii                   TED CRUZ, Texas
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland             BILL HAGERTY, Tennessee
TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois              TIM SCOTT, South Carolina
                Damian Murphy, Staff Director          
       Christopher M. Socha, Republican Staff Director          
                   John Dutton, Chief Clerk          



                              (ii)        


                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

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                                                                   Page

Menendez, Hon. Robert, U.S. Senator From New Jersey..............     1

Risch, Hon. James E., U.S. Senator From Idaho....................     3

Gupta, Hon. Dr. Rahul, Director Office of National Drug Control 
  Policy, Executive Office of the President, Washington, DC......     4
    Prepared Statement...........................................     6

Milgram, Hon. Anne, Administrator, Drug Enforcement 
  Administration, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC.....    13
    Prepared Statement...........................................    15

Robinson, Hon. Todd, Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of 
  International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, U.S. 
  Department of State, Washington, DC............................    18
    Prepared Statement...........................................    19

              Additional Material Submitted for the Record

Responses of Mr. Todd Robinson to Questions Submitted by Senator 
  James E. Risch.................................................    51

Responses of Ms. Anne Milgram to Questions Submitted by Senator 
  Tim Kaine......................................................    52

Responses of Ms. Anne Milgram to Questions Submitted by Senator 
  Bill Hagerty...................................................    53

Responses of Mr. Todd Robinson to Questions Submitted by Senator 
  Bill Hagerty...................................................    54

The New York Times Article, Dated July 25, 2022, ``Smuggling 
  Migrants at the Border Now a Billion-Dollar Business,'' 
  Submitted for the Record by Senator Ted Cruz...................    56

New York Post Article, Dated February 7, 2023, ``Terrorists Could 
  be Among 1.2 Million Million U.S. Border `Gotaways,''' 
  Submitted for the Record by Senator Ted Cruz...................    63

Press Statement From U.S. Department of State, Dated January 30, 
  2023, ``U.S. To Sanction Three Fentanyl Traffickers 
  Contributing to the U.S. Opioid Crisis,'' Submitted for the 
  Record by Senator Bill Hagerty.................................    68

Press Statement From U.S. Department of the Treasury, Dated 
  January 30, 2023, ``Treasury Sanctions Three Fentanyl 
  Traffickers Contributing to the U.S. Opioid Crisis,'' Submitted 
  for the Record by Senator Bill Hagerty.........................    69

The New York Times Article, Dated February 8, 2023, ``Full 
  Transcript of Biden's State of the Union Address,'' Submitted 
  for the Record by Senator Bill Hagerty.........................    71

Whitehouse.gov Article, Dated February 7, 2023, ``FACT SHEET: In 
  State of the Union, President Biden to Outline Vision To 
  Advance Progress on Unity Agenda in Year Ahead,'' Submitted for 
  the Record by Senator Bill Hagerty.............................    86

                                 (iii)

  

 
                COUNTERING ILLICIT FENTANYL TRAFFICKING

                              ----------                              


                      WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023

                                       U.S. Senate,
                            Committee on Foreign Relations,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:34 a.m., in 
room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Robert 
Menendez presiding.
    Present: Senators Menendez [presiding], Cardin, Shaheen, 
Murphy, Kaine, Merkley, Booker, Van Hollen, Risch, Rickett, 
Young, Cruz, Hagerty, and Scott.

          OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT MENENDEZ, 
                  U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW JERSEY

    The Chairman. This hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations 
Committee will come to order.
    Two years ago, Tanya Niederman, a mother in New Jersey, was 
at a restaurant when she answered her phone. The call that she 
got would change her life forever, a call that would tear any 
parent's heart out.
    Her only son, JJ, a typical American kid who loved to be 
outside, loved fishing, played hockey, had been found dead in 
his bedroom at home, dead from a recreational drug laced with 
fentanyl, poisoned by a drug so potent it can kill someone with 
an amount equivalent to a few grains of salt.
    Across our nation from big cities to small towns, fentanyl 
is driving a surge of deaths. Last year, the Center for Disease 
Control estimated that over 70,000 Americans died from fentanyl 
overdoses in 2021. It is the leading cause of death for 
Americans ages 
18-49.
    Secretary Robinson, Administrator Milgram, Director Gupta, 
thank you for appearing before us today to speak about one of 
the most urgent challenges facing the American public.
    The Foreign Relations Committee is holding this hearing 
because this is a crisis we cannot solve just within our 
borders. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, most 
of the fentanyl trafficked into the United States is produced 
in clandestine labs in Mexico with precursor chemicals secured 
from China.
    We need to use every foreign policy tool we have to stop 
the flow of fentanyl into our country. This means asking Mexico 
to do more to disrupt criminal organizations from producing and 
trafficking fentanyl, although a politicized judiciary and 
incidents of Mexican security forces colluding with drug 
cartels will make that very difficult, but we have to try.
    It means expanding our work with India to strengthen 
regulation of its chemical and pharmaceutical industries and, 
of course, it also means confronting China.
    I doubt Xi Jinping cares about his chemical and 
pharmaceutical industry supplying the Mexican cartels that are 
flooding the United States with fentanyl, but let us be clear. 
His government's negligence is helping unleash a deadly wave of 
fentanyl-related deaths not only here in the United States, but 
also in Canada, in Mexico, as well as countries in East and 
Southeast Asia that are struggling with their own crisis of 
synthetic opioids from China.
    While we have been trying to address this crisis for years, 
we all need to do more. That is why I co-authored the Fentanyl 
Sanctions Act with Senator Schumer in 2019 which established 
the Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking to 
chart a strategic approach for addressing this crisis, and last 
year I co-sponsored and helped secure the enactment of Senator 
Shaheen's FENTANYL Results Act.
    That is why I am urging the Biden administration to take 
additional steps to confront the fentanyl epidemic, 
prioritizing counter narcotics cooperation with willing 
partners, holding perpetrators and enablers of illicit fentanyl 
trafficking accountable.
    It is time for the United States to build a multilateral 
coalition to hold China accountable for failure to meet its 
international obligations to stop illicit drug trafficking.
    China needs to take practical and common sense steps to 
address this problem right now, like implementing know your 
customer standards, which protect against fraud, corruption, 
and money laundering.
    If Beijing fails to cooperate in good faith on indictments 
or on money laundering investigations, on information sharing 
on fentanyl and fentanyl precursor trafficking, the United 
States will have no choice but to take unilateral steps by 
expanding sanctions, visa restrictions, and other tools to 
protect the American people.
    As the Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking 
detailed in its semiannual report last year, we need to be just 
as proactive here at home, from strengthening high-tech 
screening at our borders to disrupting the open trafficking of 
fentanyl across our social media platforms to taking additional 
steps to expand access to treatment and support services for 
those in our community struggling with substance use disorder.
    That is why I think it is time to revisit the 2018 SUPPORT 
Act to confront the growing threat of fentanyl and the pressing 
need to expand access to mental health and substance use 
services.
    These are just some of the dimensions of this incredible 
challenge and I look forward to working on all of those 
iterations.
    With that, let me turn to the ranking member, Senator 
Risch, for his opening statement.

               STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES E. RISCH, 
                    U.S. SENATOR FROM IDAHO

    Senator Risch. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    First of all, I think we all know that illicit fentanyl and 
other synthetic opioids pose an unprecedented threat to 
American families.
    Far too many people in America know the heartache 
associated with the loss of life related to these deadly 
substances since almost all have had some contact with the 
heartache that is associated with that.
    In 2021, more than 100,000 Americans--more than 100,000 
Americans--died from drug overdoses, nearly 70 percent of which 
were from fentanyl poisoning. Fentanyl-related deaths among 
children 14 and under have also tripled since 2019.
    Many of these deaths involve counterfeit prescription pills 
laced with fentanyl, which law enforcement agencies report are 
easily accessible through social media.
    Addressing this threat will require greater awareness about 
the dangers of fentanyl, better coordination of local, state, 
and federal law enforcement resources for mental health, and 
effective--very effective--international cooperation.
    Where do these drugs even come from? Another way to stem 
this crisis is to identify and cut off the pipelines where we 
can. China is the primary source of illicit fentanyl and 
synthetic opioid precursors that the Mexican cartels are using 
to manufacture lethal drugs.
    They are then smuggling these drugs into the United States. 
Chinese traffickers and money launderers are also increasing 
cooperation with Mexican cartels.
    Mexican cartels leverage their drug trafficking profits to 
acquire sophisticated weapons, corrupt officials, challenge the 
authority of the Mexican state, and commit terrible atrocities.
    The same cartels are profiting from and prolonging the 
illegal migration crisis caused by the Biden administration's 
weak enforcement of border security and immigration controls.
    Several of my Senate Foreign Relations Committee colleagues 
and I released a report last year offering concrete 
recommendations to improve border security. Unfortunately, the 
Administration refuses to even acknowledge we have a problem.
    It is time the Administration wakes up. We have a serious 
threat at the border and the President needs to be serious 
about addressing it.
    The Chinese Government's tacit endorsement of this massive 
drug trade is a huge issue. Yet, the readout of the President's 
meeting with Xi Jinping in November makes no mention whatsoever 
of this really serious problem.
    Worse, if China is complicit in supplying fentanyl that 
comes to the United States, then we need to consider an 
appropriate sanctions regime. Chinese officials should also 
understand the drug-producing or transit countries eventually 
become drug-using countries. China's complacency could have 
dire consequences for the future of its nation.
    I encourage President Obrador of Mexico to deepen our 
bilateral security cooperation for the sake of our region's 
security and prosperity.
    I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today and I 
commend the men and women of your organizations who work every 
day protecting our communities.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Oh, as a matter of personal privilege, Mr. Chairman, I 
would like to welcome our Idaho Secretary of State. He is here 
meeting with the other Secretary of States who do a great job 
running our elections around America. Thank you for being here.
    Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Risch, and welcome to the 
Secretary. We are happy to have you here with us as well.
    Let me introduce our panel.
    Assistant Secretary Todd Robinson leads international 
narcotics and law enforcement affairs at the Department of 
State. Secretary Robinson previously served as U.S. Ambassador 
to the Republic of Guatemala and our charge d'affaires in 
Venezuela. We are looking forward to hearing from you today.
    We are also joined by the administrator of the Drug 
Enforcement Administration, Anne Milgram. Administrator Milgram 
previously served as New Jersey's Attorney General and a 
federal prosecutor in the United States Department of Justice 
where she was a special litigation counsel for the prosecution 
of human trafficking crimes. We appreciate your appearance.
    Finally, we are joined by Dr. Rahul Gupta, Director for the 
Office of National Drug Control Policy. Previously, Dr. Gupta 
served as health commissioner in the state of West Virginia and 
as the chief medical and health officer and senior vice 
president at the March of Dimes.
    We welcome you all. Your full statements will be included 
in the record, without objection. I would ask you to try to 
summarize your statements in about 5 minutes or so, so that we 
can have a robust discussion.
    Dr. Gupta, I understand you are going to go first, followed 
by Administrator Milgram and then Secretary Robinson.
    Dr. Gupta.

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE DR. RAHUL GUPTA, DIRECTOR OFFICE OF 
     NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY, EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE 
                   PRESIDENT, WASHINGTON, DC

    Dr. Gupta. Good morning.
    Chairman Menendez, Ranking Member Risch, and members of the 
committee, thank you for inviting me to testify here today.
    I am honored to be joined by my colleagues who are vital 
partners in implementing President Biden's National Drug 
Control Strategy and keeping our communities safe.
    This hearing could not have come at a more important time. 
America is facing the worst drug crisis we have ever seen with 
46 million Americans suffering from substance use disorder and 
more than 107,000 Americans dying from drug overdose or 
accidental poisonings a year.
    These are not just numbers, but represent devastating 
losses to families and communities with an American dying every 
5 minutes of every hour of every day.
    This is unacceptable to me and it is unacceptable to the 
President. This crisis does more than cause tragic and 
preventable deaths. It is tearing the very fabric of our 
nation. It presents a direct and surging threat to public 
health as well as our national security and economic 
prosperity.
    As a practicing physician I have had a front row seat to 
the evolution of this epidemic. As you have seen in your own 
states, it cuts across every geographic, demographic, and 
economic boundary.
    The majority of illicit drugs harming Americans are 
produced outside of the United States. Criminal elements, 
mostly in the People's Republic of China, ship precursor 
chemicals to Mexico where they are used to produce illicit 
fentanyl. Illicit fentanyl has infiltrated the entire drug 
supply, including cocaine and meth.
    Finally, somewhere in America today a teenager will find 
illicit drugs simply by opening a social media app on their 
phone. This is a new era of drug trafficking and it requires a 
new era of drug policy.
    President Biden's strategy is tackling this novel threat 
head on. We are addressing two key drivers of the epidemic: 
untreated addiction and the drug trafficking profits that fuel 
it.
    Let me be perfectly clear: Addiction is a disease and that 
must be treated and drug trafficking is a crime that must be 
prosecuted. If it remains easier to get illicit drugs in 
America than it is to treatment, we will never end this crisis 
and that is why in his State of the Union Address, President 
Biden launched a major surge to stop illicit fentanyl 
production, trafficking, and distribution at every choke point, 
including holding accountable the big tech companies that allow 
the sale of illegal drugs on their platforms. He also called 
for increasing the number of first responders and other 
professionals who can respond to mental health and substance 
use challenges.
    Thanks to the hard work of our law enforcement officers, we 
are seizing record amounts of illicit fentanyl and other drugs, 
and domestic seizures alone denied drug traffickers nearly $9 
billion in profits last year.
    I want to emphasize that while seizures and arrests are 
critically important, this problem does not begin or end at the 
United States border. That is why we are working closely with 
our international partners, especially Mexico, Colombia, India, 
Canada, and others.
    The bilateral relationship between the United States and 
the PRC is complex and characterized by competition. Yet, there 
are areas in which we can cooperate and counter narcotics as 
one. We are urging the PRC to join us in this action.
    Rather than demonstrate global leadership by engaging in 
efforts to rein in illicit precursor production and 
trafficking--an issue where PRC plays an outsized role--the PRC 
is instead choosing to not engage.
    Now, I want to be clear: A nation that seeks to demonstrate 
global leadership must act as a global leader on global issues. 
Where security, prosperity, and lives around the world are at 
stake there is no excuse for inaction, and the United States 
will continue to lead in the global coalition against illicit 
fentanyl with or without the PRC.
    At last month's North America Leaders Summit in Mexico 
City, for instance, President Biden made illicit fentanyl a 
main topic of conversation. He pressed President Lopez Obrador 
to act with a shared sense of responsibility towards the threat 
of drug trafficking and its associated criminality, and all of 
us here will work with Mexico to drive results.
    At home, President Biden has led public health efforts to 
tackle this epidemic as well. We are expanding access to 
naloxone and treatment, focusing on evidence-based prevention, 
and supporting people in recovery.
    Critically, we work closely with Republicans and Democrats 
in Congress to remove barriers to treatment for millions of 
Americans. We will save lives as we implement this historic 
legislation in partnership with DEA and HHS.
    We are showing the country what we can accomplish when we 
work together. As the CDC just announced, we have now seen 6 
straight months of reports where overdose numbers have 
decreased or been flat. That is around 3,000 people who have 
not died and instead are at the dinner table each night.
    The opioid crisis is not a red state problem or a blue 
state problem. This is America's problem, and the President 
knows as all of you know that it will take all of us working 
together to solve it. All of us.
    This is the time to put politics aside and make life better 
for the American people. To this end, my request to you and to 
Congress at large is to fully fund President Biden's drug 
control budget, which will be released soon, and I look forward 
to working with Congress to accomplish our shared goals to save 
American lives and keep our communities healthy and safe.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Gupta follows:]

                 Prepared Statement of Dr. Rahul Gupta

                              introduction
    Chairman Menendez, Ranking Member Risch, and Members of the 
Committee, thank you for inviting me to testify today on the ever-
changing illicit drug environment we face in the United States, which 
in the last year has claimed nearly 107,000 \1\ lives and torn families 
and communities apart, as well as the Biden-Harris administration's 
work to reduce the availability of illicit fentanyl in the United 
States, expand access to addiction treatment, and save American lives.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NCHS. ``Vital 
Statistics Rapid Release: Provisional Drug Overdose Death Counts.'' 
January 11, 2023. Accessed January 11, 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/
nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I am honored to be joined today by my colleagues from the Drug 
Enforcement Administration and the Department of State's Bureau of 
International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, who are vital 
partners in implementing the President's National Drug Control 
Strategy, and in keeping our country and our communities safe.
                           the opioid crisis
    This hearing could not come at a more important time. America faces 
the worst drug crisis we have ever seen, with 107,000 Americans dying 
from drug overdose or accidental poisoning in 1 year. That is one of 
our fellow citizens dying every 5 minutes, of every hour, of every day, 
here in America. This is unacceptable, full stop.
    We are in the throes of the most dynamic drug trafficking and use 
environment in our nation's history. As you have all seen in your own 
states, this crisis cuts across every geographic, demographic, and 
economic boundary in our Nation. It inflicts a severe human toll with 
lost lives and suffering in our communities and damages on our 
prosperity, public health, public safety, and national security.
    Addiction is a disease and has been prevalent in the U.S. for 
centuries. More recently, our Nation has experienced a rise in overdose 
and drug poisoning deaths for the decades leading up to the emergence 
of illicit fentanyl, which is now involved in the majority of these 
deaths. We are all too familiar with how this epidemic began: The 
overprescribing of prescription opioid pain medications, which led many 
being denied those medications to turn to heroin, and then the 
introduction of illicit fentanyl into the heroin supply, and then to an 
exploding market for synthetic opioids, many of which are either 
pressed into pills and sold as counterfeit prescription pain 
medications or added to other illicit substances like methamphetamine 
and cocaine, too often with deadly consequences. As a practicing 
physician, I have had a front seat to this. In fact, polysubstance use 
has become a growing concern and has contributed to this unprecedented 
death toll because illicit fentanyl has contaminated the drug supply at 
large.
    Today we are faced with a global illicit market that produces and 
traffics in illicit drugs on a worldwide scale, with a domestic illicit 
drug supply that is increasingly toxic, regardless of whether one 
thinks they are using opioids, methamphetamine, or cocaine, and where 
the ability of an American teenager to find illicit drugs is literally 
in the palm of his or her hand, and as simple as opening a social media 
app.
    We must comprehend that the ground has shifted beneath us in 
relation to the drug supply environment. While the era of the large 
volume of plant-based drugs being cultivated and produced has not 
ended, the age of small volume, high-potency, synthetic drug production 
has clearly begun. Drug production no longer requires thousands of 
acres of poppy or coca grows and hundreds of workers all serving within 
a hierarchical drug cartel. Individual producers and traffickers today 
can enter the illicit drug business on their own with little more than 
a relatively few chemicals, a small area to work, and a reliable 
internet connection.
    Synthetic opioids like illicit fentanyl and its analogues are 
produced using precursor chemicals made available by malicious actors, 
often in the People's Republic of China (PRC), which are shipped to 
Mexico, where they are used to produce illicit fentanyl or fentanyl-
related substances. This illicit fentanyl is either sold in powder form 
or pressed into the fake pills that have poisoned so many Americans. 
These drugs are then either moved across our southern border, typically 
through the existing ports of entry, or shipped into the United States 
through the mail or through express consignment carriers.
    This changing drug environment creates an enormous challenge for 
law enforcement and public safety because these drugs can be created 
anywhere, including in a small apartment in an urban area; they can be 
transported in smaller amounts because of their potency in small doses; 
they do not require trafficking routes controlled by drug trafficking 
organizations and instead can be shipped through private sector 
commercial carriers; and technological advances not only enable these 
drugs to be bought and sold online, including on social media, but also 
provide new options for laundering the proceeds of illicit drug sales.
    It also creates an enormous challenge for public health because 
illicit fentanyl is incredibly lethal, leading to high levels of both 
fatal and non-fatal overdoses each day; the burden of responding to 
overdoses falls often to first responders and hospital emergency 
departments; our Nation lacks the necessary addiction infrastructure to 
treat everyone who has a substance use disorder; and millions of 
Americans in communities nationwide are forced to deal with the fallout 
of overdoses and drug poisoning deaths, including providing services 
and care for children left behind when a parent dies.
    Additionally, this crisis is further complicated by polysubstance 
use, including the more recent addition of xylazine, which is a non-
opioid veterinary tranquilizer being added to illicit fentanyl that 
negatively affects breathing, complicating the ability of naloxone to 
reverse an overdose. In the SUPPORT Act of 2018, Congress charged ONDCP 
with reviewing emerging threats such as this and we are examining the 
data closely and working with local partners in areas affected by 
xylazine in order to determine the appropriate response.
                     the administration's response
    The Biden-Harris administration's response has been historic in 
nature and specifically designed to tackle this new threat environment 
head-on.
    The new era of drug trafficking requires a new era of drug policy, 
targeting the two key drivers of this crisis, untreated addiction and 
the drug trafficking profits that fuel it, with equal effort and 
determination.
    In his State of the Union Address, President Biden called for 
launching a major surge to stop illicit fentanyl production, 
trafficking, and distribution, and increasing the number of first 
responders and other professionals who can respond to mental health and 
substance use challenges.
    What does that mean? It means we will build on the historic 
progress we have already made by employing more advanced technology to 
detect and interdict more illicit fentanyl at our borders.
    We will expand our work with commercial package delivery companies 
to identify and intercept more packages containing illicit opioids and 
the raw materials to make them.
    We will lead a sustained diplomatic push that will address fentanyl 
and its supply chain abroad, including working with international 
partners to disrupt the global fentanyl production and supply chain, 
and call on others to join our efforts.
    We will continue our work with Congress to permanently schedule all 
fentanyl-related substances so we can close, once and for all, a 
loophole illicit drug producers and traffickers have used for too long, 
and ensure they receive the justice they richly deserve.
    We will work with the Ad Council to launch a national campaign to 
educate young people on the dangers of fentanyl and how they can save 
the lives of those around them who fall victim to it.
    We will work to ensure everyone who needs treatment for substance 
use disorder gets it, including people who are incarcerated and at much 
higher risk for overdose death when they're released.
    And, we will continue to expand access to lifesaving medications 
for opioid use disorder, allowing countless more Americans to stay 
alive and begin the path to long-term recovery.
    In addition to all of this, we are continuing our ongoing work to 
improve access to the tools necessary to reduce the harms of these 
dangerous drugs, and the risks of falling victim to a fatal poisoning 
or overdose.
    This includes ensuring the lifesaving drug naloxone is in the hands 
of everyone who may need it; expanding our efforts to prevent the youth 
of our Nation from initiating drug use and developing substance use 
disorder; and building a recovery-ready America that opens 
opportunities for those who have emerged from the depths of addiction 
and are on the path to recovery. Furthermore, President Biden's 
National Drug Control Strategy calls for supporting the addiction 
treatment and recovery workforce like never before in order to help 
build the addiction infrastructure our Nation so desperately needs.
    Finally, we will sprint directly toward the source of this problem, 
and disrupt the global supply chain of illicit fentanyl production and 
trafficking that manufactures these drugs in foreign countries, and 
brings them across our borders and into our communities.
    Reducing the market for these drugs in the United States, and 
disrupting their supply chain into our country, are two sides of the 
same coin and will allow us to shrink this illicit global market and 
reduce the harms it is causing our Nation.
    Let me be perfectly clear: addiction is a disease and it must be 
treated, and illicit fentanyl trafficking is a crime and it must be 
prosecuted to save lives and protect our communities.
    All of these actions build on the historic work the Administration 
has already done over the past 2 years to address this crisis.
    From the very beginning, the Biden-Harris administration has 
undertaken a comprehensive evidence-based approach to reduce drug-
related deaths, expand access to treatment for substance use disorder, 
and target the global production and trafficking of synthetic opioids, 
like illicit fentanyl, which kill tens of thousands of Americans each 
year.
    President Biden's inaugural National Drug Control Strategy, 
released in 2022, relies on the best evidence and data we have 
available, and sets out a whole-of-government approach to attack the 
two drivers of the opioid overdose epidemic: untreated addiction, and 
the drug trafficking profits that fuel this crisis. The 
Administration's approach addresses both the public health aspects of 
this crisis as well as its national security, public safety, and 
economic dimensions, because addressing this problem holistically is 
the best approach to prevent overdose deaths and achieve long term and 
sustainable success against a problem that has claimed more than 1 
million American lives over the past 24 years. We have also taken a new 
and more comprehensive approach to disrupt the production of these 
substances in other countries, interdict their global movement, and 
target the trafficker profits and operating capital that sustains this 
global illicit enterprise.
    We will expand sanctions across the global supply chain targeting 
bad actors that enable illicit fentanyl production. The Executive Order 
that the President issued in December 2021, ``Imposing Sanctions on 
Foreign Persons Involved in the Global Illicit Drug Trade,'' broadened 
and modernized our authorities to impose sanctions on a range of 
targets related to the trafficking of illicit synthetic opioids, giving 
the United States the ability to effectively target actors across the 
diffuse and decentralized global illicit drug supply chain. Since this 
Executive Order was signed, the Department of the Treasury imposed new 
sanctions against an array of narcotic targets around the world, 
including those within the illicit synthetic opioid trade. In fact, 
just 2 weeks ago, the Department of the Treasury sanctioned three 
additional illicit fentanyl traffickers, including the leader of a 
Mexico-based network and two of his associates. Overall, the Department 
of the Treasury's sanctions under both the Kingpin Act and the December 
2021 Executive Order have targeted not only individuals and entities 
tied to the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel 
(CJNG), but also the online illicit fentanyl trade and the corruption 
that facilitates drug trafficking.
           securing the border and supporting law enforcement
    Disrupting the flow of drugs into the United States is important 
not only to keep them from harming our citizens and denying drug 
traffickers the proceeds, but it is especially important as the means 
to allow our historic investments in public health interventions to 
take hold.
    We must do both, together, because the simple truth is this: if we 
make it harder to get illicit drugs in America and easier to get 
treatment, we will make progress to reduce overdose deaths and bring 
this crisis to a close.
    That is why we are continuing the necessary and difficult work of 
interdicting illicit drugs at our borders and within communities across 
the country. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of our U.S. Customs 
and Border Protection (CBP) officers and agents, as well as the 33 High 
Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTAs) covering all 50 states, 
seizures of illicit fentanyl, methamphetamine, and cocaine are all up 
significantly.
    In fiscal year 2022, CBP seized nearly 15,000 pounds of fentanyl, 
nearly 2,000 pounds of heroin, 175,000 pounds of methamphetamine, and 
more than 70,000 pounds of cocaine.\2\ That's twice as much as CBP 
seized in 2021 and four times as much as 2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ Customs and Border Protection. ``CBP Drug Seizure Statistics 
Dashboard, FY2023.'' (Dashboard filtered for FY2022 only.) Accessed 
January 22, 2023. https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/drug-seizure-
statistics
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    These numbers not only speak to the magnitude of the threat, but 
also the incredible work of the men and women of our CBP who keep our 
borders secure and our communities safe.
    It is the fundamental duty of every nation to secure its borders 
and protect its people from harm, and President Biden has repeatedly 
called for more resources to secure our border from the threat of 
illicit drug trafficking.
    In addition, domestically, during fiscal year 2022, our HIDTA Task 
Forces seized more than 26,000 pounds of illicit fentanyl, nearly 6,500 
pounds of heroin, more than 335,000 pounds of meth, and nearly 370,000 
pounds of cocaine, representing nearly $9 billion of profits denied to 
drug traffickers.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ Office of National Drug Control Policy. ``Press Release: Dr. 
Gupta and Law Enforcement Officials Announce New Domestic Seizure Data 
from ONDCP'S High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas.'' January 23, 2022. 
https://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/briefing-room/2023/01/23/dr-gupta-and-
law-enforcement-officials-announce-new-domestic-seizure-data-from-
ondcps-high-intensity-drug-trafficking-areas/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    And, thanks to our men and women on our borders, and our law 
enforcement professionals across the country, these are drugs that are 
not in our communities, will never kill a single American, and this is 
money that cannot be used to fund this illicit business or allow drug 
traffickers to enjoy obscene profits from the suffering of others.
    Our CBP officials, and our 33 HIDTAs nationwide, deserve our thanks 
and appreciation for all their hard work in preventing drug poisoning 
deaths and holding traffickers accountable. I also want to thank the 
Congress and the members of this Committee for your long history of 
strong support for our HIDTA program. HIDTA has played a critical role 
in our success thus far and will continue to be a critical part of our 
work going forward.
    To that point, we must ensure we are supporting the brave women and 
men in law enforcement who risk life and limb to stop drug traffickers. 
We must also ensure they have the tools they need to do their jobs.
    In last year's Budget request, President Biden called for a funding 
increase to support the work of CBP and the DEA.\4\ They have risen to 
meet the increasing threat our Nation faces, and we thank the Congress 
for providing them the resources they need to continue their vital work 
in keeping us safe from these dangerous drugs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\ Office of National Drug Control Policy. ``FY 2023 Budget 
Highlights.'' March 22, 2022. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/
uploads/2022/03/FY-2023-Budget-Highlights.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In December, the Congress passed a 2-year extension of the 
scheduling of fentanyl- related substances, which controls these 
substances as a class and provides the necessary authorities for our 
law enforcement entities to prevent the production and trafficking of 
all potential fentanyl analogues.
    Thank you for your leadership and partnership on extending this 
temporary authority. However, the production and trafficking of 
fentanyl-related substances is now a permanent and defining feature of 
the global drug trafficking landscape, and it demands a permanent 
solution. We look forward to working with the Congress to bring this 
about, as outlined in the Administration's proposal to Congress in 
September 2021, which was developed jointly by ONDCP, HHS, and DOJ.
        beyond the border: the united states' global leadership
    While seizures and arrests are critically important, this problem 
does not begin or end at the United States border.
    To address this new and dynamic environment, we have broadened our 
approach to focus on commercially disrupting what is, in essence, an 
illicit global business enterprise with huge capital resources, routine 
collaboration with raw material suppliers across international borders, 
advanced technology to fund and conduct business, and product 
innovation and strategies to expand markets.
    We are doing this through a deliberate and coordinated whole-of-
government effort that focuses and synchronizes all the national policy 
levers to disrupt the global illicit synthetic drug production and 
trafficking enterprise. This includes strategically targeting criminal 
facilitators and enablers, and the targeting of key vulnerabilities in 
the illicit fentanyl supply chain to maximize our impact across the 
drug producers' and traffickers' spectrum of capabilities.
    Through Commercial Disruption, we are targeting not only the 
finished drugs themselves and those who sell them, but also the raw 
materials and machinery used to produce them, the commercial shipping 
that moves these items around the world, and the illicit financial 
structures that allow this illicit global business to operate and 
allows drug producers and traffickers the ability to enjoy the profits 
and benefits of their illicit business.
    Our approach embraces the fact that the production and trafficking 
of these drugs is a global problem, and United States leadership at the 
global level is absolutely essential.
    We must also remember that while drug trafficking is harmful in its 
own right, and imperils the health, well-being, and safety of our 
citizens and their communities, it is also part of a larger complex of 
criminal behaviors that have negative effects not only in the United 
States but in the rest of the world.
    In illicit drug producing and transit countries, drug trafficking 
drives state and regional instability and fuels corruption, and there 
are too many regions, in too many countries, where drug producers and 
traffickers supplant democratic norms and good governance with brute 
force and intimidation to secure the freedom of movement they need to 
pursue their criminal activities.
    In Fall 2021, Secretary of State Blinken requested that the United 
Nations (UN) consider placing international controls on three fentanyl 
precursors. And through U.S. leadership, the March 2022 UN Commission 
on Narcotic Drugs unanimously voted to internationally control three 
key chemicals used by drug traffickers to produce illicit fentanyl.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\ Office of National Drug Control Policy. ``Press Release: At 
Urging of U.S., UN Commission Acts Against `Precursor' Chemicals Used 
to Produce Illicit Fentanyl.'' March 16, 2022. Accessed January 22, 
2023. https://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/briefing-room/2022/03/16/at-
urging-of-u-s-un-commission-acts-against-precursor-chemicals-used-to-
produce-illicit-fentanyl/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    We are also working closely with our international partners, 
including Mexico, Colombia, India, Canada, and others such as the PRC 
on this work.
    The bilateral relationship between the United States and the PRC is 
complex, and progress with them on this issue does not move in a 
straight line.
    We will continue to manage our competition with the PRC responsibly 
while exploring possible cooperation on transnational challenges, and 
counternarcotics is one such issue.
    That's why I was disappointed, and expressed that publicly in a 
Wall Street Journal op- ed, when the PRC decided to suspend cooperation 
on counternarcotics after Speaker Pelosi's visit to Taiwan last August.
    We are calling on the PRC to take swift action to enforce ``Know 
Your Customer'' regulations for certain chemicals, pill presses, and 
die molds, to the end-user level; ensuring the proper labeling of these 
items before export in accordance with World Trade Organization 
standards; and helping the international community to identify and 
share information on chemicals that pose a risk for diversion.
    These are commonsense due diligence measures that should be 
expected of every responsible country, and we have repeatedly urged the 
PRC to undertake them for the benefit of all countries suffering from 
the synthetic drug problem, not just the United States.
    However, in recent years the PRC has not substantially engaged on 
this issue, despite the fact that it is a major source country for 
chemical precursors. This is a fact.
    Years of seizure and law enforcement data show that the PRC is the 
major source country for precursor chemical shipments, pill presses, 
and die molds to the Western Hemisphere.
    When the PRC demonstrates the willingness to address the grave and 
growing problem of illicit synthetic drug production and trafficking, 
they will find a willing partner in the United States. And that, too, 
is a fact.
    As we urge the PRC to join us in leading the world against illicit 
synthetic opioids, we must also recognize the downstream effects of 
going after drug traffickers--and prepare to address these unintended 
consequences. For example, when the PRC scheduled all fentanyl- related 
substances in 2019 at our behest, this had an unintended impact.
    Traffickers adjusted from sending shipments of finished illicit 
fentanyl directly to the U.S. to instead sending precursor chemicals to 
Mexico, where illicit fentanyl production has proliferated. Today, our 
work with Mexico is critical.
    That's why President Biden made illicit fentanyl a main topic at 
last month's North American Leaders Summit in Mexico City. Given the 
combination of our shared border, our 200-year bilateral relationship, 
and the effect that criminal elements in Mexico have on the drug 
production and trafficking environment on both sides of the border, it 
is vitally important that our bilateral relationship be characterized 
by mutual respect, and a sense of the shared responsibility we have to 
address the shared threat of drug trafficking and its associated 
criminality.
    During the 2021 High-Level Security Dialogue between the United 
States and Mexico, we reaffirmed our joint commitment to take concrete 
actions on both sides of the border to address the shared security 
challenges affecting our communities, including human trafficking and 
smuggling, violence and illicit firearms, as well as substance use 
disorder and illicit drugs.
    In our first year under the Bicentennial Framework, we protected 
the health of our citizens by expanding our collaboration to reduce 
substance use disorder and its associated harm. We also intensified 
efforts to prevent transnational criminal organizations from harming 
our countries. And, we pursued criminal networks by cracking down on 
transnational money laundering networks and extraditing criminals. Our 
specific asks of Mexico included increasing the number of 
municipalities using crime prevention methods to guide at-risk youth 
and disrupt cycles of violence; reducing impunity for homicides and 
high-impact crimes using data, analysis, prioritization, and task 
forces focused on investigating specific crimes; committing to and 
implementing an action plan to prevent the consumption and trafficking 
of synthetic drugs, specifically fentanyl and methamphetamines; working 
together to advance cybersecurity and infrastructure security 
cooperation; and more.
    Relatedly, the United States counternarcotics relationship with 
India is robust and growing rapidly. India, with its expanding chemical 
and pharmaceutical industries, access to international ports, and vast 
educated workforce is a natural partner in addressing the synthetic 
drug problem.
    The United States and India have formally established a bilateral 
Counter Narcotics Working Group, the first of its kind between us, and 
we have created the architecture and relationships to achieve tangible 
outcomes against synthetic drug production and trafficking at the 
global level. We are also working closely with the Indian Government to 
collaborate more closely on youth substance use prevention, our public 
health responses to substance use, the science of addiction medicine, 
law enforcement, and regulatory development and enforcement.
    The U.S.-India counternarcotics relationship, the world's oldest 
democracy working so closely with the world's largest, can serve as an 
example of nations working together to tackle difficult problems for 
the common good.
    The United States is leading the global effort against synthetic 
drugs. By focusing on the commercial disruption of the global illicit 
enterprise of synthetic drug trafficking, through our bilateral 
relationships with key partners and our leadership at the multilateral 
level to address both the interrelated national security, public 
health, and public safety aspects of drug trafficking, and by stopping 
the drugs at our border and taking the fight to illicit drug producers 
and traffickers wherever they are, this Administration is tackling this 
crisis with the focus and determination it demands.
                             progress made
    Under President Biden's leadership, we have begun to make progress 
in addressing this epidemic.
    In last year's State of the Union address, the President called for 
removing barriers to medication treatment, and we have done that--
working with Republicans and Democrats in Congress to remove the X-
waiver. This will expand access to medication treatment for millions of 
Americans with opioid use disorder, and it will save lives. This is 
what we can accomplish when we work together to beat this. And I want 
to thank the members of this Committee and the Congress at large for 
supporting this bill.
    Additionally, this Administration has worked diligently to expand 
access to treatment through other means and to prevent overdoses by 
expanding access to naloxone. DEA intends to issue proposed rulemaking 
to make permanent the COVID-era flexibilities regarding telehealth 
buprenorphine induction and HHS issued a proposed rule to allow 
continued flexibility for take-home methadone doses, and by summer, the 
Bureau of Prisons will offer in-house medication-assisted treatment at 
each of their 122 facilities. Naloxone has become more widely available 
thanks to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allowing 
Overdose Data to Action grantees to purchase naloxone using federal 
grant dollars, and the Food and Drug Administration has begun the 
process for potentially allowing naloxone to be purchased over the 
counter.
    The Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs administers 
the Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Use Program, which 
provides grant funding and training and technical assistance to state, 
local, Tribal, and territorial efforts in response to substance use and 
misuse in order to reduce overdose deaths, promote public safety, and 
support access to prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and recovery 
services in the community and justice system. Increasing access to 
naloxone at no cost is a key strategy for many COSSUP-funded projects.
    Finally, HHS now requires that states submit naloxone distribution 
and saturation plans as part of their application for State Opioid 
Response grants, which Congress recently increased the funding for by 
$50 million in the Omnibus Appropriations Act.
    Today, thanks to the Biden-Harris administration, more people than 
ever can access treatment for opioid use disorder, we are stopping more 
fentanyl at the border than ever before, and we bringing traffickers to 
justice.
    According to provisional data, thanks to these efforts and our 
historic public health advances, we have now seen five straight months 
where overdose numbers have decreased. That's almost 3,000 people who 
haven't died and instead are at the dinner table each night. And for 
the first time in years, there appears to be a flattening of overdose 
deaths.
    This is a hopeful sign, but we must not slow down our efforts to 
beat this crisis. Instead, we must use this momentum to accelerate our 
actions against untreated addiction and the drug trafficking profits 
that fuel it.
                      conclusion: the path forward
    For President Biden and his Administration, the path forward is 
clear: We must do everything in our power to save American lives, and 
work with a sense of urgency because American lives depend on it.
    Having been a physician for my entire adult life, I have seen the 
nature of addiction with my own eyes, and I can share with you that 
people with a substance use disorder are in a fight every single day. 
They and their families should expect nothing less from us.
    We are facing this challenge, and we are doubling down on what we 
know works: expanding access to public health services and cracking 
down on fentanyl trafficking.
    We should always remember that while the international drug 
trafficking enterprise is adaptive, resilient, and incredibly capable, 
it is not without its own vulnerabilities. And it is no match for the 
experience, talent, and commitment the United States and its 
international partners can bring to bear on this pressing global 
problem when we muster the will to do so.
    President Biden is launching this surge because our approach must 
surpass the tenacity, resolve, innovation, and resources of what we are 
up against. And together, we, this Administration, this Congress, and 
our partners in communities nationwide, can solve this problem and beat 
this epidemic.
    The opioid crisis is not a red state problem or a blue state 
problem. This is America's problem--and the President knows, just as 
you all know, that it will take all of us working together to solve it. 
All of us. This is the time to put politics aside and make life better 
for the American people.
    As President Biden said in his State of the Union address: ``We are 
the United States of America and there is nothing, nothing beyond our 
capacity if we do it together.''
    My request to you and to the Congress at large is to fully fund 
President Biden's drug control budget, which will be released next 
month. I also ask that you continue to work with ONDCP and the 
Administration to ensure that each and every American has the support 
they need to avoid overdose or drug poisoning death and instead be 
healthy and productive members of their community and our Nation.
    Finally, I commend this Committee for holding this hearing so early 
in the 118th Congress. The fact that the issue of illicit fentanyl is 
such a priority for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, just as it 
is for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which ONDCP testified 
before earlier this month, demonstrates not only the strong bicameral 
and bipartisan interest and support for addressing the opioid crisis, 
but also the breadth and depth of this issue, which cuts across 
domestic and foreign policy, as well as public health, public safety, 
law enforcement, and beyond. So, thank you for having both the 
commitment and the foresight to bring light to this issue so early in 
this session.
    On behalf of the hardworking women and men of the Office of 
National Drug Control Policy, I look forward to working with the 
Congress to accomplish our shared goals and save American lives, and I 
look forward to this Committee's questions today.
    Thank you.

    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Administrator Milgram.

 STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ANNE MILGRAM, ADMINISTRATOR, DRUG 
    ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, 
                         WASHINGTON, DC

    Ms. Milgram. Thank you, Senator. Thank you for the 
privilege of testifying before the committee today.
    Every single day when I walk into DEA headquarters in 
Arlington, Virginia, I walk past the faces of Fentanyl Memorial 
Wall that we have built.
    Starting last summer we asked families across the United 
States if they wanted to share with us a photo of one of their 
loved ones that they had lost to fentanyl poisoning.
    We started with about 100 photos in the first week last 
May. Today, there are 4,895 photos that line our headquarters 
walls at DEA in Arlington.
    The wall is a memorial to the lives that have been lost and 
it is a call to action for the men and women of DEA that at 
this moment in time we have to do everything we can to save 
American lives.
    The youngest person on that wall is Serenity Faith, forever 
17 months-old, and the oldest is James Cox, forever 70 years-
old. Those are just some of the lives lost and we know that 
between August of 2021 and August of 2022, 107,735 American 
lives were lost to drug poisoning.
    Perhaps the most important thing that I can tell this 
committee today is that we know who is responsible. The Sinaloa 
cartel and the Jalisco, or CJNG cartel, both cartels in Mexico, 
are responsible for the vast majority of fentanyl that is 
coming into the United States. It is why DEA has made defeating 
those two cartels our top operational priority.
    To explain a little more, those two cartels dominate the 
entire global fentanyl supply chain. They start in China where 
they are purchasing precursor chemicals to make fentanyl.
    They then take those chemicals into Mexico where they are 
mass producing fentanyl, first, fentanyl powder, and second, 
they are pressing a great deal of that powder into fake 
prescription pills in Mexico.
    Those pills look identical to real American and 
international medicines, things like oxycodone, percocet, 
adderall, or xanax, but they have no real medicine in them. 
They are fentanyl and filler.
    The cartels then move the fentanyl powder and the fake 
pills into the United States. They sell a lot of it on social 
media and in other ways across our country. We are now seizing 
fentanyl in all 50 states and it is the deadliest drug threat 
our country has ever faced.
    After the cartels sell those drugs in the U.S., they work 
to get their profits back to Mexico and they do that through 
illicit finance. Often today we see, through Chinese money 
laundering, organizations that are operating both in the United 
States and in Mexico.
    For all these reasons, our top operational priority right 
now is to defeat these two cartels. First, we have taken a 
network-based approach to the cartels. We can no longer just 
target the high-value targets--the people at the top of the 
cartels--and expect that we will see a change.
    We are targeting the entire networks, from the precursor 
chemical companies in China to the chemists and the members of 
the cartel mass producing fentanyl in Mexico, to the people 
transporting the fentanyl into the United States, selling the 
fentanyl in the United States, and then moving the money back 
into Mexico.
    Second, we formed this past September two counter-threat 
teams. Right now, on top of all of DEA, are 332 offices 
worldwide in 69 countries. We have one counter-threat team 
devoted solely to defeating the Sinaloa cartel and one devoted 
to the Jalisco cartel.
    On those teams we have special agents, we have intelligence 
analysts, we have targeters, we have data scientists, and we 
have subject matter experts like chemists and experts on 
illicit finance and Chinese precursors.
    Those teams are mapping these entire cartels worldwide. We 
have now to date identified those two cartels in more than 40 
countries around the world.
    In addition to mapping those cartels they are analyzing 
those cartels to identify the key notes that we can use to 
defeat the cartels and they are also targeting the cartels. We 
have already begun sending out target packages across the 
United States.
    In addition to all of that work, we are working in our 
communities. We know drug-related violence has increased and we 
have seen the devastation of drug poisoning deaths.
    Finally, we are working on public awareness and I know so 
many members of this committee are doing the same, but we 
believe that every American has to understand that One Pill Can 
Kill and that fentanyl is the deadliest threat facing our 
country today.
    I want to close by saying that as you hear me talk today 
you will hear anger, frustration, and sadness in my voice and I 
admit that I feel all of those things, but what drives me is 
not that. What drives me is the belief, the knowledge, that 
working together we can defeat these two cartels, we can make 
our communities safe and healthy, and we can save American 
lives.
    Thank you for the privilege of being with you today.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Milgram follows:]

                 Prepared Statement of Ms. Anne Milgram

    Chairman Menendez, Ranking Member Risch, and distinguished members 
of the committee: On behalf of the Department of Justice (Department), 
and in particular the over 10,000 employees working at the Drug 
Enforcement Administration (DEA), thank you for the opportunity to 
appear before you today to discuss DEA's work to save lives and to 
combat the deadly drug poisoning epidemic in our country.
    From September 2021 through August 2022, an estimated 107,477 
people lost their lives to drug poisonings in the United States. Every 
day, 294 people die from drug poisonings. Countless more people are 
poisoned and survive. These drug poisonings are a national crisis.
    The DEA's top operational priority is to defeat the two Mexican 
drug cartels--the Sinaloa cartel and Jalisco New Generation (Jalisco) 
cartel--that are responsible for driving the drug poisoning epidemic in 
the United States. DEA is focusing its resources to counter this 
worldwide threat, and has launched a number of key initiatives to meet 
the moment.
                      the drug poisoning epidemic
    According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 
a majority of the drug poisoning deaths in the United States involve 
synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, that are being distributed in new 
forms. Fentanyl is being hidden in and being mixed with other illicit 
drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. Drug traffickers 
are also flooding our communities with fentanyl disguised in the form 
of fake prescription pills. These fake pills are made and marketed by 
drug traffickers to deceive Americans into thinking that they are real, 
diverted prescription medications. In reality, these fake prescription 
pills are highly addictive and are potentially deadly. DEA lab testing 
reveals that 6 out of 10 of these fentanyl-laced fake prescription 
pills contain a potentially lethal dose.
    The availability of fentanyl throughout the United States has 
reached unprecedented heights. In 2022, DEA seized more than 50 million 
fake pills and 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder equating to 
approximately 379 million deadly doses of fentanyl. This is enough 
fentanyl to supply a potentially lethal dose to every member of the 
U.S. population. These seizures occurred in every state in the country.
                  the drug enforcement administration
    As the single mission agency tasked with enforcing our nation's 
drug laws, DEA's top operational priority is to relentlessly pursue and 
defeat the Sinaloa and Jalisco Cartels that are responsible for the 
current fentanyl and drug poisoning epidemic.
    DEA is the lead agency on the law enforcement elements in the 
Biden-Harris administration's whole-of-government response to defeat 
the cartels and combat the drug poisoning epidemic in our communities. 
DEA's role in leading the law enforcement response to the fentanyl 
epidemic protects the safety of agents, officers, and sources. 
Importantly, a unified response to the fentanyl epidemic ensures that 
the whole-of-government is moving in one direction that protects the 
safety and health of Americans.
    DEA operates 23 domestic field divisions with 239 domestic offices 
and nine forensic labs. Internationally, DEA has 92 foreign offices in 
69 countries. DEA's robust domestic and international presence allows 
it to map and target the entire Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco Cartel 
networks.
    In addition, DEA has launched two cross-agency counterthreat teams 
to execute a network-focused operational strategy. The two teams are 
mapping, analyzing, and targeting the cartels' entire criminal 
networks. The teams are composed of special agents, intelligence 
analysts, targeters, program analysts, data scientists, and digital 
specialists. This network-focused strategy is critical to defeating the 
Sinaloa and Jalisco Cartels.
    DEA is simultaneously focused on protecting American communities. 
We are targeting the drug trafficking organizations and gangs located 
in the United States that are responsible for the greatest number of 
drug-related deaths and violence. DEA's Operation Overdrive uses a 
data-driven, intelligence-led approach to identify and dismantle 
criminal drug networks operating in areas with the highest rates of 
violence and drug poisoning deaths. In each of these locations, DEA is 
working with local and state law enforcement officials to conduct 
threat assessments identifying the criminal networks and individuals 
that are causing the most harm. DEA works with state, local, and 
federal law enforcement and prosecutorial partners to pursue 
investigations and prosecutions that will reduce drug-related violence 
and drug poisonings. Phase one of Operation Overdrive took place in 34 
locations across the United States, and phase two is currently 
occurring in 57 locations.
    In 2021, DEA launched the ``One Pill Can Kill'' enforcement effort 
and public awareness campaign. As part of the first two phases of the 
enforcement effort, DEA and our law enforcement partners seized more 
than 20 million fake, fentanyl-laced prescription pills. In phase three 
of the enforcement effort, which was conducted between May and 
September 2022, DEA seized more than 10 million fake, fentanyl-laced 
prescription pills and approximately 980 pounds of fentanyl powder. 
This equates to roughly 36 million potential lethal doses of fentanyl, 
which could have entered our communities. Additionally, this 
enforcement effort resulted in 390 investigated cases, including 35 
cases with a direct link to one or both of the primary Mexican cartels 
responsible for the majority of fentanyl in the United States: the 
Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Cartel. Moreover, DEA investigated 129 
cases directly linked to the sale of fake pills containing fentanyl on 
social media.
    DEA is working closely with our local, state, tribal, territorial, 
federal, and international counterparts to target every part of the 
illegal drug supply chain and every level of the drug trafficking 
organizations that threaten the health and safety of our communities. 
To succeed, we must use every tool to combat this substantial threat 
that is being driven by the cartels, as well as the Chinese-sourced 
precursor chemicals and Chinese money laundering operations that 
facilitate the cartels' operations.
                  mexican cartels and drug trafficking
    The Sinaloa and Jalisco Cartels pose the greatest criminal drug 
threat the United States has ever faced. These ruthless, violent, 
criminal organizations have associates, facilitators, and brokers in 
all 50 states in the United States, as well as in more than 40 
countries around the world.
    The Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Cartel and their affiliates 
control the vast majority of the fentanyl global supply chain, from 
manufacture to distribution. The cartels are buying precursor chemicals 
in the People's Republic of China (PRC); transporting the precursor 
chemicals from the PRC to Mexico; using the precursor chemicals to mass 
produce fentanyl; pressing the fentanyl into fake prescription pills; 
and using cars, trucks, and other routes to transport the drugs from 
Mexico into the United States for distribution. It costs the cartels as 
little as 10 cents to produce a fentanyl-laced fake prescription pill 
that is sold in the United States for $10 to $30 per pill.
    Drugs manufactured by the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Cartel 
often end up being marketed by dealers using social media platforms to 
relentlessly expand their business and deceptively sell fake 
prescription pills directly to young people and teenagers. Drug 
traffickers operate on multiple platforms simultaneously, and often 
drive traffic between platforms.
    The business model used by the Sinaloa and Jalisco Cartels is to 
grow at all costs, no matter how many people die in the process. The 
cartels are engaging in deliberate, calculated treachery to deceive 
Americans and drive addiction to achieve higher profits.
The Sinaloa Cartel
    The Sinaloa Cartel, based in the Mexican State of Sinaloa, is one 
of the oldest drug trafficking organizations in Mexico. The Sinaloa 
Cartel controls drug trafficking activity in various regions in Mexico, 
particularly along the Pacific Coast. Additionally, it maintains the 
most expansive international footprint of the Mexican cartels. The 
Sinaloa Cartel exports and distributes wholesale amounts of 
methamphetamine, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl in the United 
States by maintaining distribution hubs in cities that include Phoenix, 
Los Angeles, Denver, and Chicago. Illicit drugs distributed by the 
Sinaloa Cartel are primarily smuggled into the United States through 
crossing points located along Mexico's border with California, Arizona, 
New Mexico, and Texas. Sinaloa reportedly has a presence in 15 of the 
32 Mexican states.
The Jalisco Cartel
    The Jalisco Cartel is based in the city of Guadalajara in the 
Mexican state of Jalisco, and was originally formed as a spin off from 
the Milenio Cartel, a subordinate to the Sinaloa Cartel. The Jalisco 
Cartel maintains illicit drug distribution hubs in Los Angeles, 
Seattle, Charlotte, Chicago, and Atlanta. Internationally, the Jalisco 
Cartel has a presence and influence through associates, facilitators, 
and brokers on every continent except Antarctica. The Jalisco Cartel 
smuggles illicit drugs such as methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine, and 
fentanyl into the United States by accessing various trafficking 
corridors along the southwest border that include Tijuana, Mexicali, 
Ciudad Juarez, Matamoros, and Nuevo Laredo. The Jalisco Cartel's rapid 
expansion of its drug trafficking activities is characterized by the 
organization's willingness to engage in violent confrontations with 
Mexican Government security forces and rival cartels. The Jalisco 
Cartel reportedly has a presence in 21 of the 32 Mexican states.
           people's republic of china and precursor chemicals
    Chemical companies within the PRC produce and sell the majority of 
precursor chemicals that are used today by the Sinaloa and Jalisco 
Cartels to manufacture fentanyl and methamphetamine. These precursor 
chemicals from companies within the PRC are the foundation of the 
fentanyl and methamphetamine that is manufactured and transported from 
Mexico into the United States, and is causing hundreds of thousands of 
drug-related deaths in our country.
    According to the State Department's 2021 International Narcotics 
Control Strategy Report, there are approximately 160,000 chemical 
companies in the PRC. Chemical companies within the PRC distribute and 
sell precursor chemicals that are used in fentanyl and methamphetamine 
production around the world. Some companies within the PRC, for 
example, engage in false cargo labeling and ship chemicals to Mexico 
without tracking the customers purchasing the chemicals.
    DEA has been and remains willing to engage the PRC Government on 
fentanyl related substances and fentanyl precursor chemicals. However, 
due to diplomatic tensions between the United States and the PRC, the 
government has suspended all counter-narcotics cooperation with the 
United States. Moreover, since 2019, the PRC Government has repeatedly 
declined diplomatic and congressional requests to stop precursor 
chemicals from going to Mexico for the production of illicit fentanyl 
and methamphetamine.
          chinese money laundering operations and the cartels
    The Sinaloa and Jalisco Cartels utilize U.S.-based Chinese Money 
Laundering Organizations (CMLOs) around the world to facilitate 
laundering drug proceeds. CMLOs use trade-based money laundering and 
bulk cash movement to facilitate the exchange of foreign currency. The 
use of CMLOs by the cartels simplifies the money laundering process and 
streamlines the purchase of precursor chemicals utilized in 
manufacturing drugs.
    These money laundering schemes are designed to remedy two separate 
issues: (1) the desire of Mexican cartels to repatriate drug proceeds 
into the Mexican banking system, and (2) wealthy Chinese nationals who 
are restricted by the PRC's capital flight laws from transferring large 
sums of money held in Chinese bank accounts for use abroad. To address 
these issues, CMLOs acquire U.S. dollars held by Mexican cartels as a 
means to supply their customers in China.
                               conclusion
    DEA will continue our relentless pursuit to dismantle the Sinaloa 
Cartel and Jalisco Cartel that are driving drug poisonings and 
threatening the safety and health of our communities. Thank you again 
for the opportunity to appear before the committee today. I look 
forward to answering your questions.

    The Chairman. Thank you, Madam Administrator.
    Secretary Robinson.

 STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE TODD ROBINSON, ASSISTANT SECRETARY 
OF STATE, BUREAU OF INTERNATIONAL NARCOTICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT 
       AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, DC

    Mr. Robinson. Chairman Menendez, Ranking Member Risch, and 
members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to 
testify today.
    Synthetic drugs, including fentanyl, are a shared global 
challenge requiring a global approach. This is a top priority 
for President Biden and the Administration, as he stated during 
last week's State of the Union address.
    I share the President's commitment to stop fentanyl 
production, sale, and trafficking. Secretary of State Blinken 
also has made clear we must bring the full power of American 
diplomacy to this challenge.
    We are engaging our foreign partners to protect national 
security and global health by disrupting the illicit synthetic 
drug supply chain and supporting the effective prevention, 
treatment, and recovery to end this epidemic and save American 
lives.
    Synthetic drugs can be produced virtually anywhere, often 
using legal chemicals and equipment. Traffickers adapt quickly 
to evade regulatory controls and we must stay ahead of the 
curve with a more agile and comprehensive approach.
    We will treat this as both a security and public health 
threat. We will bring new partners on board including countries 
that may soon be affected as well as the private sector, and we 
will approach countries and other partners through the lens of 
joint responsibility for action.
    Most fentanyl seized in the United States is synthesized in 
Mexico using precursor chemicals sourced primarily from the PRC 
and then trafficked via the U.S. southern border.
    Our enduring security cooperation with Mexico is critical 
to our efforts to address fentanyl trafficking. The U.S.-Mexico 
Bicentennial Framework and the North American Drug Dialogue 
guide our work to disrupt the synthetic drugs supply chain and 
promote public health.
    Both countries seized historic amounts of fentanyl in 2022. 
INL-donated canines in Mexico helped seize more than 75,000 
fentanyl pills from January to August 2022.
    Meanwhile, Mexico created a watch list to flag chemicals 
that can be diverted to illicit drug production and expanded 
this list from 14 to 69 chemicals.
    We hope Mexico will invest more in combating the synthetic 
drug threat from prevention, treatment, and recovery to the 
investigations and prosecutions.
    The United States remains committed to meaningful counter 
narcotics cooperation with the PRC despite the PRC's limited 
willingness to engage on the issue of late.
    Past cooperation has proven to be fruitful and effective. 
The PRC decision to schedule fentanyl-related substances as a 
class in 2019 essentially ended PRC-origin shipments to the 
United States. Transnational criminal organizations adapted and 
now use PRC-sourced precursor chemicals to synthesize the 
fentanyl in Mexico.
    The PRC can and must do more as a global partner to limit 
criminal access to these chemicals. We continue to press them 
to take meaningful concrete actions to curb criminal diversion 
of precursor chemicals, improve information sharing on global 
chemical flows, strengthen enforcement of customs manifesting 
agreements, and implement Know Your Customer standards to 
restrict sales of precursor chemicals.
    Foreign partners look to the United States for leadership 
on this issue. The 2022 U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs at 
U.S. urging unanimously decided to internationally control 
three emerging fentanyl precursor chemicals.
    At the same U.N. meeting the United States also secured 
agreement to redouble action on diversion and trafficking in 
unscheduled and designer precursors.
    We support global tools that facilitate international law 
enforcement cooperation, establish best practices for denying 
criminals access to the tools of modern commerce, and 
strengthen norms to prevent the sale of precursor chemicals and 
tableting equipment.
    Private industry must also play a role since many precursor 
chemicals used in illicit drug production have legitimate uses. 
We will partner with a variety of industries to disrupt 
synthetic drug supply chains.
    Finally, Congress can play a role--a vital role--in 
supporting our efforts. We need Congress to look at permanently 
controlling fentanyl-related substances as a class.
    Synthetic drugs are an urgent priority for us and we are 
committed to working with all partners, including Congress, to 
develop solutions.
    Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today 
and I look forward to your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Robinson follows:]

                Prepared Statement of Mr. Todd Robinson

    Chairman Menendez, Ranking Member Risch, and distinguished Members 
of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today 
regarding the Department of State's efforts to address the global 
health and security threat posed by illicitly manufactured fentanyl and 
other synthetic drugs. Addressing international trafficking of 
synthetic drugs is an essential element of foreign policy that delivers 
for the American people.
    As you and too many of our fellow Americans know from personal 
experience, synthetic drugs, particularly synthetic opioids, such as 
fentanyl, continue to ravage our communities. At last week's State of 
the Union address, President Biden shared the all-too familiar and 
tragic story of a family grieving the loss of their daughter to a 
fentanyl overdose. I share the President's commitment to stop fentanyl 
production, sale, and trafficking.
    The State Department is leading the way to ensure our foreign 
assistance tools and diplomacy help drive a global response to the 
synthetic drug threat that is oriented toward protecting public health 
by expanding evidence-based prevention, treatment, and recovery support 
measures, while disrupting the ability of transnational criminal 
organizations (TCOs) to push synthetic drugs into our communities.
    Since fentanyl and other synthetic drugs can be produced virtually 
anywhere--often using perfectly legal chemicals and equipment--and 
traffickers adapt quickly to evade regulatory controls, addressing this 
threat requires a more agile and comprehensive approach beyond 
traditional law enforcement and import control measures. That includes 
a strong focus on harm reduction, substance use prevention, treatment, 
and recovery support services, both at home and abroad, even as we 
unstintingly work to address the illicit drug supply. Secretary of 
State Blinken has made clear we have to bring to bear the full power of 
American diplomacy, as part of a whole-of-government effort, to address 
this challenge. We will seek bilateral collaboration, conveying that 
responding urgently to this mutual challenge is a shared 
responsibility. We will continue to urge our international partners to 
act, and we will support their efforts to do so. We will advance 
cooperation and galvanize action more broadly through our leadership in 
multilateral fora such as the UN. And, recognizing the key role of the 
private sector to help prevent the diversion of precursor chemicals and 
better monitor and share information about fentanyl and precursor 
chemicals shipped by air, sea, or express consignment, we will 
intensify our collaboration with the business community.
    While our focus is global, we will continue partnering with 
countries key to current production trends. Most of the fentanyl seized 
in the United States is synthesized in Mexico, using precursor 
chemicals sourced primarily from the People's Republic of China (PRC) 
and then smuggled into the U.S. via the U.S. southern border. Our 
enduring security cooperation with Mexico is critical to our efforts to 
address fentanyl trafficking, reverse our overdose crisis, and prepare 
to confront emerging synthetic drug threats in the future. The U.S.-
Mexico Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health, and Safe 
Communities guides our counternarcotics cooperation as well as other 
important shared security priorities. At the October 2022 High-Level 
Security Dialogue (HLSD), Secretary Blinken, Attorney General Garland, 
DHS Secretary Mayorkas, Director of National Drug Control Policy Dr. 
Gupta, and their Mexican counterparts recommitted to the Framework and 
our joint efforts to better protect the health and safety of our 
citizens, prevent criminal organizations from harming our countries, 
and pursue criminal networks and bring them to justice.
    In addition to both countries' seizing historic amounts of fentanyl 
in 2022, Mexico created a watchlist to flag chemicals that can be 
diverted to illicit drug production for additional scrutiny; it 
subsequently expanded this list from 14 to 69 chemicals. The Bureau of 
International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) has sponsored U.S.-
Mexico forensic chemist exchanges on synthetic drug synthesis, held 
fentanyl awareness trainings for Mexican law enforcement, and donated 
detection canines and protective equipment to facilitate fentanyl 
interdiction. INL-donated canines in Mexico helped seize more than 
75,000 fentanyl pills from January to August 2022. Still, as we noted 
during the last HLSD, Mexican resource constraints limit the reach of 
our cooperation. The United States Government invested billions of 
dollars, both domestically and abroad, to address synthetic drugs and 
other bilateral security challenges in 2022. We hope Mexico will make 
similar investments in all aspects of combatting the synthetic drug 
threat, from prevention, treatment, and recovery to investigations and 
prosecutions.
    At the last HLSD, recognizing the need to broaden our approach 
beyond law enforcement, the United States and Mexico committed to a 
joint synthetic drug action plan. This plan complements ongoing 
cooperation between our law enforcement agencies, which continue to 
focus on dismantling the transnational criminal organizations that 
synthesize and traffic these dangerous drugs. The action plan brings in 
additional entities not traditionally involved in counternarcotics 
efforts--regulatory agencies, health- and trade-focused agencies, and 
the private sector--to harmonize our regulatory and public health 
approaches and focus together on building the capacity needed to 
disrupt the broader synthetic drug supply chain.
    Our efforts extend beyond Mexico across all of North America 
through the North American Drug Dialogue. This longstanding partnership 
with Mexico and Canada is a crucial element to address the movement of 
deadly drugs like fentanyl into the United States. However, our efforts 
to disrupt the illicit synthetic drug supply chain must broaden to 
encompass all countries where chemicals are produced or shipped.
    The PRC has an important role to play. The United States remains 
committed to meaningful counternarcotics cooperation with the PRC, 
despite the PRC's limited willingness to engage on the issue of late. 
Past cooperation between the United States and the PRC on 
counternarcotics has proven to be fruitful and effective, as 
exemplified by the PRC decision in 2019 to schedule fentanyl-related 
substances as a class, essentially ending PRC-origin shipments of these 
substances to the United States. However, transnational criminal 
organizations have since adapted to this change and now use PRC-sourced 
precursor chemicals to synthesize fentanyl, methamphetamine, and other 
synthetic drugs in Mexico and around the world. The PRC can and must do 
more to act meaningfully in this regard beyond its class-wide control 
of fentanyl-related substances. Through all available channels, we 
continue to press the PRC to take meaningful, concrete actions to curb 
criminal diversion of precursor chemicals for the illicit production of 
synthetic drugs. We have encouraged the PRC to improve information-
sharing on global chemical flows, strengthen enforcement of customs 
manifesting agreements, and implement know-your-customer standards to 
restrict sales of precursor chemicals to only customers with legitimate 
needs.
    As the PRC is not the only potential source of precursor chemicals 
and equipment used in illicit drug production, we also work with other 
international partners. India is a key partner in this global approach. 
We have yet to see significant flows of fentanyl or related precursors 
from India to the United States or Mexico, but as we increase pressure 
on criminal networks elsewhere, some criminal organizations could look 
to India as a possible source. Recognizing India's role as the global 
leader in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, expanding our 
bilateral counternarcotics cooperation with India is a priority, and 
we're investing heavily in working with India. Since the U.S.-India 
Counternarcotics Working Group started in 2020, we have strengthened 
our counternarcotics cooperation, most recently by establishing three 
topical steering groups that are building a robust annual calendar of 
meetings to identify specific actions we can partner on together across 
law enforcement, regulatory, multilateral, and public health spectrums.
    This is a global problem, and multilateral fora play a critical 
role in driving coordinated global action against these threats. We 
will leverage U.S. engagement in the UN, G7, G20, and OAS and with the 
EU to mobilize strategic action at the national, regional, and 
international levels, building information sharing, fostering exchange 
of best practices, and galvanizing uptake of international tools that 
can help countries take action. Through targeted advocacy, we secured 
commitments from our G7 and EU partners to enhance cooperation in 
multilateral fora to address synthetic drug challenges. We will broaden 
and intensify this cooperation in 2023. Additionally, we are 
collaborating closely with India on ways to introduce a dedicated 
workstream in the G20 focused on counternarcotics as part of India's 
G20 presidency.
    International scheduling under the UN drug control conventions 
remains a valuable tool because it requires State Parties to enact 
commensurate controls--in other words, regulation--within their 
national frameworks. At the UN Commission on Narcotics Drugs (CND) in 
2022, as a result of U.S. leadership, the CND decided unanimously to 
place three emerging fentanyl precursor chemicals under international 
control. This disrupts the illicit market by forcing traffickers to 
find alternative ways to illicitly manufacture fentanyl and reduces the 
presence of dangerous substances in the illicit supply chain.
    Recognizing that traffickers can quickly adapt to international 
scheduling actions by shifting to alternative, unscheduled precursor 
chemicals, the United States also leveraged the CND in 2022 to 
proactively address this workaround by sponsoring a resolution on 
diversion and trafficking in unscheduled and designer precursors. This 
resolution, adopted by consensus, will advance international efforts to 
outpace criminals working in this illegal trade by providing Member 
States with concrete, actionable steps and tools to preemptively 
restrict access to chemicals likely to be used as substitutes for 
existing precursors. We also support the World Health Organization 
efforts to accelerate the rate at which the Expert Committee on Drug 
Dependence can review new psychoactive substances and make 
recommendations for international control.
    We supported the development of and are amplifying global tools 
that facilitate international law enforcement cooperation, establish 
best practices for denying criminals access to the tools of modern 
commerce, and strengthen norms to prevent the sale of precursor 
chemicals and tableting equipment. We support the International 
Narcotics Control Board's (INCB) Precursor Chemical Control Program, 
which enables real-time intelligence sharing and international law 
enforcement cooperation to prevent the diversion and illicit 
manufacturing of precursor chemicals and support transnational 
investigations. INL funds the INCB's Global Rapid Interdiction of 
Dangerous Substances Program, or GRIDS, which supports the real-time 
exchange of intelligence on shipments or trafficking of new 
psychoactive substances, including fentanyl-related substances. With 
the information provided through GRIDS, the INCB is facilitating more 
multilateral investigations that result in the disruption of 
international trafficking cells and high-profile arrests.
    To further enhance international awareness of synthetic drug risks, 
INL funded the development of the UN Toolkit on Synthetic Drugs in 
partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The 
online platform has helped governments better address synthetic drug 
challenges, including by enacting legislative responses to the 
emergence of new psychoactive substances, strengthening air cargo and 
aviation security, and developing drug surveillance and early warning 
systems. The Toolkit also provides a wealth of information to support 
countries to improve drug prevention, treatment, and recovery programs. 
Over 30,000 users from 200 jurisdictions have accessed the Toolkit's 
manuals, guidelines, and e-learning videos.
    Private industry must also play a role, since many precursor 
chemicals used in illicit drug production have legitimate uses. The 
U.S. Government will partner with global pharmaceutical, chemical, and 
shipping industries, as well as online marketplaces, to share 
information and galvanize further action, and we ask that other 
countries do as well.
    To reinforce our diplomatic efforts, INL employs deterrence and 
disruption tools to discourage high-level corruption and support the 
work of law enforcement. Specific to illicit drug trafficking, INL 
manages two rewards programs targeting high-level drug traffickers and 
other transnational criminal leaders. These rewards programs have 
helped our law enforcement partners bring more than 75 international 
drug kingpins and crime bosses to justice. INL also coordinates action 
across the Department to provide foreign policy guidance to the 
Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control on the 
use of financial sanctions to target individuals and businesses 
facilitating or supporting the illicit drug trade.
    As promoting public health is a critical component to addressing 
this challenge, INL made that an important element of its cooperation 
with other countries. INL programs build our partners' capacity to 
deliver life-saving drug use prevention, treatment, and recovery 
support interventions worldwide.
    Finally, Congress can play a vital role in supporting our efforts. 
We are assessing whether new authorities would help to fight fentanyl 
more effectively--and will not hesitate to ask for your support. Right 
now, we need Congress to lead in permanently controlling fentanyl-class 
substances. Our approach of successive temporary controls undercuts the 
power of our arguments to encourage other countries to take action. 
Adopting this approach helps countries stay one step ahead of the 
narco-chemists and protects our citizens. Additionally, we ask that as 
you engage foreign leadership, you join us in calling for increased 
partnership on this shared threat.
    Synthetic drugs are a shared global challenge requiring a global 
approach. Any overdose is one too many and each overdose death is 
devastating to the families and communities that experience a loss. 
Every country must do its part. At the State Department, we will 
continue to engage our foreign partners to protect global health and 
security by disrupting the illicit synthetic drug supply chain and 
supporting the effective prevention, treatment, and recovery of 
substance use to end this epidemic and save American lives. We are 
committed to working with our international and interagency partners, 
and with Congress to develop sustainable solutions for a safer and more 
secure future.
    Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today, and I 
look forward to your questions.

    The Chairman. Thank you all and we will start a round of 
questions.
    Administrator Milgram, is it fair to say that the vast 
majority of fentanyl trafficking comes into our nation through 
official ports of entry?
    Ms. Milgram. Thank you, Senator, for that question.
    As you know, the Department of Homeland Security is 
responsible for the American border and the ports of entry, so 
DEA is not engaged at the border or the ports of entry.
    What I can tell you from our cases and the work that we do 
across the United States and across the world is that virtually 
all the fentanyl that we are seizing in the United States is 
coming from Mexico and we do believe that much of that is 
coming through ports of entry in California and Arizona.
    Again, I would defer conversation or questions specifically 
about the port to DHS.
    The Chairman. Okay. To the extent that you know, are they 
coming through the hands of vulnerable people seeking to 
fleeing their country?
    Ms. Milgram. I would have to defer that question, Senator, 
to the Department of Homeland Security.
    The Chairman. Okay.
    Ms. Milgram. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Let me ask a question maybe you can answer 
and that is in Mexico--dealing with this problem without a 
partner in Mexico is not possible. The two cartels that you 
mentioned emanate from Mexico. It is impossible to tackle 
fentanyl trafficking without a productive partnership with 
Mexico.
    However, there are obstacles to improving cooperation. 
Mexico's increased politicized national prosecutor's office has 
shown little appetite to prosecute fentanyl-related cases.
    Collusion between cartels and Mexico authorities is a 
recurring challenge as seen in the ongoing trial of former 
security minister Garcia Luna, and Mexican authorities seem 
unwilling to acknowledge that the vast majority of fentanyl 
entering the United States is manufactured in clandestine labs 
in Mexico.
    What is it that we are doing with the Lopez Obrador 
government to change that reality? As you go after these 
cartels, do you--is it your assessment that the primary 
obstacles to improving cooperation with Mexican authorities to 
combat fentanyl trafficking, is that either we do not have a 
willing partner or that, in fact, the state itself is 
infiltrated by the cartels?
    Ms. Milgram. Senator, thank you for that question.
    We believe Mexico needs to do more to stop the harm that we 
are seeing. As I stated, what we are seeing is that these two 
cartels in Mexico--the Sinaloa and the Jalisco cartel--are 
dominating and controlling the entire global supply chain of 
fentanyl and they are operating throughout Mexico.
    The Sinaloa cartel, we believe, is operating in 19 of 32 
Mexican states and the Jalisco cartel is operating in 23 of 32 
Mexican states.
    What we know is that Mexico in the past worked relentlessly 
from 2012 to 2015 to disrupt one of the most violent criminal 
networks in Mexico, the Zetas, and they were effective at 
dismantling that cartel.
    We want Mexico to do the same thing here, to make their top 
operational priority also to defeat the two cartels that we 
believe are responsible for the fentanyl as well as the 
methamphetamine that is responsible for the loss of American 
lives today.
    The Chairman. That is not the present state of Mexico's 
will?
    Secretary Robinson.
    Mr. Robinson. Thank you, Senator, for that question.
    I would say that we--in the conversations we have had, 
Mexico is willing to do more. They have actively engaged with 
us both through the U.S. Bicentennial--the U.S.-Mexico 
Bicentennial Framework where they have committed to doing more.
    They have also committed to doing more in the discussions 
we have had in the North American Drug Dialogue. What we have 
been asking Mexico to do is put more resources into this 
effort, which is, obviously, for Mexico and the Mexican 
Government a domestic issue.
    For us it is an international issue. For us it is a 
national security issue. The amount of resources they put into 
this effort is for them a domestic issue and it is something 
that we are trying to deal with.
    The Chairman. I have to be honest with you, I do not see 
it. I just do not see it. I do not see the willingness. I do 
not see the urgency. I do not see the commitment. I do not see 
the actions that would indicate to me that Mexico is being a 
good partner.
    Have you talked to our ambassador there about this? Is he 
engaged on this issue?
    Mr. Robinson. Yes and yes to both questions.
    The Chairman. I hope he is vigorously engaged on the issue 
because we start with China and precursor chemicals and we need 
to create an international coalition that pressures China.
    They promote themselves as a big counternarcotics nation, 
quite on the contrary, just from my perspective. Then we have 
our next door neighbor who this is a critical issue and I just 
do not see it happening. I have to be honest with you, if the 
good overtures to try to get them to act is not working then 
there has to be other considerations.
    I just think that we work with our Mexican friends with kid 
gloves on this issue and I just--it is fundamentally wrong. I 
do not know how many more lives have to be lost for Mexico to 
get engaged. If this was in the reverse they would be all over 
us. President Lopez Obrador would be all over us in this 
regard.
    Lastly, can you work--Administrator, can your people work 
freely with Mexican counterparts? Are you concerned about the 
information, the intelligence, the security of what you are 
trying to do with your counterparts in Mexico?
    Ms. Milgram. Senator, thank you. Thank you for the 
question, and there are three ways in which we believe that we 
would like to see Mexico cooperate far more with DEA and with 
the United States.
    The first--and this is under the Bicentennial Framework--
the first is information sharing. We are not getting 
information on fentanyl seizures.
    We are not getting information on seizures of precursor 
chemicals, and that kind of information, as you rightly state, 
is vital for both countries, both for Mexico and for the United 
States.
    Second, we are very concerned about the clandestine labs 
across Mexico and we have offered and continue to offer and 
stand ready to work in partnership with Mexican authorities to 
dismantle and take down those clandestine labs throughout 
Mexico jointly and to be of any service that we can.
    Finally, the last point you just mentioned--the Garcia Luna 
trial, which is a DEA investigation--the trial is ongoing in 
the Eastern District of New York this week.
    One of the things we are looking for Mexico to do is to 
arrest and extradite more individuals to the United States. 
Last year, Mexico extradited 24 drug-related defendants to the 
United States, but there are 232 drug-related defendants that 
are awaiting extradition.
    This is also a critical part of our work and, again, we are 
working globally across the world as we are now tracking these 
cartels in 40 different countries, but it is vital that we be 
able to work in Mexico as well.
    The Chairman. Senator Risch.
    Senator Risch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Ambassador Robinson, I have the President's readout from 
his conversation with Xi Jinping on November 14 and I am sure 
you have probably seen this and been through it, and what 
struck me is that there is not one mention in here of the 
fentanyl problem that we have got with China.
    Do you know whether or not the President raised this with 
Xi Jinping when he had this conversation?
    Mr. Robinson. Thank you, Senator.
    I do not know if they were able to get to it during their 
conversation. I do know that, as you know, the relationship 
between the United States and China is complex. There are a lot 
of issues on the table.
    There is no doubt that this Administration and the 
Secretary are both keenly aware of the importance of this issue 
and have charged us at the State Department with reaching out 
to our international partners to work as closely as possible on 
this.
    Senator Risch. I think complex is as kind a way as you 
could say it regarding our relationship with China at the 
present time.
    We understand from other people at State that you guys are 
getting the Heisman from them. They are just stiff arming you 
and saying, well, you guys should quit using drugs and that is 
the end of it. Is that your experience with what you are 
getting from the Chinese?
    Mr. Robinson. We have had very limited engagement with 
China on this issue in particular. I know our ambassador, 
Ambassador Burns in Beijing, has had some conversations at the 
ministerial level.
    There is a lot more that we could do together and we know 
good things happen when China takes responsibility for these--
for issues like this. We saw it in 2019 when they scheduled 
fentanyl and the chemicals. It stopped almost completely coming 
directly from China to the United States.
    Senator Risch. Right. I think most people are aware of 
that. The difficulty, of course, is that that situation 
deteriorated dramatically and quickly and we are back to where 
we were before and nothing is--China is not impressing us as 
doing anything on this issue anymore. Is that your impression?
    Mr. Robinson. My impression is that they could do--that 
there are basic steps they could take that they are not taking 
right now that could help a lot.
    They could monitor and make more transparent the labeling 
of chemicals leaving the country. They could exchange more 
information with us and they could follow the trail and make 
sure that the companies that are exporting these chemicals know 
who the chemicals are going to, particularly in Mexico where we 
know the drug is being synthesized.
    They are not doing that now. They are not talking to us, 
really, about it. They should, and if they did we think that 
this would go a long way towards helping to get at the issue.
    Senator Risch. That is an accurate description of what I 
have heard also and I do not know what the path forward is. I 
guess that is your guys' job, but you need to come up with 
something to get their attention, and I do not know what it is, 
but it certainly is not working right now.
    Administrator Milgram, first of all, let me say I want to 
associate myself with the remarks of the chairman regarding our 
impression of what Mexico is not doing and causing us no end to 
the problem.
    Your appearing here today and your very clear-eyed 
description of what is happening and not happening and putting 
the blame right where it belongs is greatly appreciated and I 
think it will help underscore for the American people what 
needs to be done, and I think the chairman has laid out very 
clearly that there does need to be something done differently 
or there is going to have to be other action taken.
    One of the things that bothers me and I always--I hate to 
put it in these terms, but I cringe every time I hear somebody 
from the Administration say, oh, well, the border is secure.
    I do not know--America does not believe that, that the 
border is secure with the thousands of people that are coming 
across.
    Do you agree that this catastrophe we have on the border is 
contributing to the problem of the drugs coming into the 
country?
    Ms. Milgram. Senator, thank you so much for that question.
    The DEA does not operate the border or the ports of entry.
    Senator Risch. I get that. That is not your fault.
    Ms. Milgram. Thank you. We do not operate the border or the 
ports of entry. I would defer questions to them.
    What I can tell you is that at DEA we view our job as 
playing offense. That is targeting the cartels worldwide to do 
everything we can to stop the fentanyl and the methamphetamine 
and other deadly drugs from even getting to that point and we 
also--once the drugs have entered the United States, we work 
relentlessly to make sure our communities are safe and healthy 
by stopping drug-related violence and drug poisonings.
    We view DHS' role as they have the primary mission of 
playing defense, of stopping fentanyl from entering at the 
border, and so we know that that is a vital part of this 
conversation.
    Last year we seized--at year's end the final calculation 
was 57 million fake fentanyl pills and more than 13,000 pounds 
of fentanyl. That is the equivalent of 410 million potential 
deadly doses that we seized in the United States of America.
    Senator Risch. I appreciate that and I appreciate that that 
is not your primary obligation, but I think you should keep 
pressure on those that we know who--that their primary 
obligation is to secure the border. I think that would be very 
helpful.
    My time is up, but let me ask one quick question about the 
social media aspects of this. Are you having any luck at all 
with the social media platforms?
    I understand that is secondary. You want to stop it from 
coming in first, but once it gets here, obviously, as you have 
indicated, social media platforms are a real scourge for 
distributing this stuff. Are you having any luck there at all?
    Ms. Milgram. Senator, thank you for the question and I 
think it is a critical point for us to discuss today.
    We view social media right now as the superhighway of 
drugs, and if I could just take a moment and--it will seem like 
I am going a little bit off social media, but I promise I am 
coming right back.
    The question I get asked when I am out in the public more 
than any other is why would these cartels kill their customers 
and the answer today is that fentanyl is so addictive that the 
cartels are using it to drive addiction and for them if a user 
dies it is the cost of doing business.
    We are in a very different position than we were 20 years 
ago before social media existed where someone who might be 
selling narcotics had more of a personal relationship with the 
person who was buying.
    Today, the cartels understand that if someone dies from 
taking their deadly fentanyl that there are 100 million other 
users on Snapchat that they can sell their drugs to.
    There are more than 150 million American users on Facebook 
and on Instagram that they can sell their drugs to, and so 
social media is truly the superhighway of drugs. I welcome a 
visit from any of the members of this committee to DEA 
headquarters and I can show you the faces of the American lives 
lost from fake pills purchased on Snapchat, from fake pills 
purchased on Facebook, from fake pills purchased on Instagram 
and TikTok and other sites.
    The long answer coming to the short closing is that the 
social media sites are not doing nearly enough and we would 
welcome the opportunity to work with this committee and others 
in Congress to make sure that the social media companies are 
held accountable and that they become fully transparent about 
what is happening and what they are doing.
    Senator Risch. Did I understand you right that half of the 
American people--150 million people or a third, 100 million are 
using--are fentanyl customers?
    Ms. Milgram. No, Senator. I am sorry. They are customers of 
social media. What has happened in the decades since the 
internet and globalization is that there are a vast number of 
Americans who are on social media and those transactions where 
the cartels and their traffickers are marketing and selling 
these fake prescription pills and other drugs all over social 
media.
    We see that on a daily basis and what we see is that the 
cartels will just pivot to the next potential buyer on those 
social media platforms and there are many Americans on those 
social media platforms.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Senator Murphy.
    Senator Murphy. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Let me just add to the bipartisan consensus on this panel. 
I understand that our witnesses have to be diplomatic in the 
way that they talk about Mexico.
    Let us be honest, at best, Mexico is not taking this crisis 
seriously enough and, at worst, the Mexican Government or at 
least significant parts of it are either looking the other way 
or complicit with the cartels. That is just the truth.
    To answer Senator Menendez's question from before, it is 
actually true that the vast majority of fentanyl that is coming 
into the United States at the southern border is coming through 
the ports. As the chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee 
that funds our border operations, that is why we are putting 
increased amounts of resources to catch it there.
    I do not necessarily know that the DEA should defer to DHS 
on that question. It is obviously your job to know where and 
how the drugs are coming across the border.
    It is also true that the ports in Mexico are a big problem 
as well and I just do not think it is realistic that we are 
going to defeat the Mexican drug cartels in the next 5 years. 
Maybe you think differently.
    Concentrating efforts on those ports--on the Mexican 
ports--which are often controlled by those cartels, I think, is 
a interesting place to start.
    Administrator Milgram, I wanted to ask you that question. 
What is our level of integration with Mexican authorities to 
unwind the corruption that exists at the ports and is that a 
logical place for us to try to target our resources, given that 
that is where most of the precursor is showing up and being 
transferred to the cartels?
    Ms. Milgram. Senator, thank you. Thank you for that 
question. If I could, let me start by talking a little bit 
about corruption, generally.
    What we see is that corruption is a part of narcotics 
trafficking worldwide and there are many examples that we could 
give. DEA was the lead investigative agency on the current case 
we just spoke about, the Garcia Luna case. We also did the 
investigation that led to the charges against the current 
Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro.
    Senator Murphy. I am talking about the ports, just because 
I am going to run out of time.
    Ms. Milgram. Yes. Let me say two things. The first is that 
you are correct in saying that the vast majority of precursor 
chemicals for methamphetamine are coming in at the Mexican 
ports. I would see it differently on the fentanyl precursors. 
We see many of those also coming into the airports. What is----
    Senator Murphy. I guess I mean land and sea ports.
    Ms. Milgram. Yes. What is happening, and I would just sort 
of describe this a little bit, is that the precursor chemicals 
necessary for methamphetamine are enormously big.
    The precursor chemicals necessary for fentanyl are much 
smaller and, again, we know that tiny amounts--the amount that 
fits on the tip of a pencil--are potentially deadly for 
fentanyl and the precursors needed to make that amount are far 
smaller.
    Are we focused on the ports and the airports and also 
overland conveyances through Latin America? Yes, Senator, we 
are.
    Dr. Gupta. Can I jump in?
    Senator Murphy. Let me just turn to another topic, because 
I want to get at least one more in.
    In a meeting I had with the now Chinese foreign minister--
and I will ask this to, you Secretary Robinson, but hopefully, 
you are the right person to answer this--they made a claim that 
our coordination has been limited by a set of sanctions that 
the Commerce Department applied in 2020 against China's 
Institute for Forensic Science at the Ministry of Public 
Security and their national narcotics laboratory.
    Now, these were sanctions connected to human rights 
violations authorized by Congress. Is there any validity that 
these sanctions have impacted our ability to work with the 
Chinese Government?
    The claim is that if we were to lift those particular 
sanctions that we would open up new avenues of cooperation on 
this question of precursor export into Mexico.
    Mr. Robinson. Thank you, Senator, for that question. The 
short answer is no.
    The facility that they are talking about is a large 
facility. One part of that facility was sanctioned by the 
Commerce Department, but the larger--the narcotics bureau or 
laboratory was not. The PRC has been using this as an excuse 
not to engage with us on this issue.
    Senator Murphy. Then maybe I will submit this question for 
the record, but I also think it is important to understand the 
circular trade that happens at the Mexican border with these 
cartels. It is American guns going south and it is Chinese and 
Mexican drugs coming north.
    I congratulate this Congress----
    Mr. Robinson. And money.
    Senator Murphy. And money. And money, right, going both 
ways.
    I congratulate this Congress because in the last budget for 
the first time we put $50 million specifically towards the work 
of interrupting the gun trade--the firearms trade--going south, 
and I would encourage us to understand the sort of full circle 
of this trade, that much of this is what is coming to us, but 
we are fueling the cartels' ability to run this trade by 
allowing these guns to be bought in the United States through 
background checks exceptions and sent down to Mexico.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you. The next member is Senator 
Ricketts, who we welcome to the committee as a new member.
    Senator Ricketts.
    Senator Ricketts. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Taryn Lee Griffith was a 24-year-old mom from Nebraska who 
died in 2021 of a fentanyl overdose. Her father, Mike, said 
that once you met Taryn you would never forget her. She had a 
personality that drew people's attention the moment she walked 
into the room and a big heart for others.
    The day that Taryn died, she was out with friends and took 
a pill she thought was percocet that was laced with fentanyl 
and that is what killed her.
    Taryn's youngest daughter was just 6-months-old when her 
mother died and she has a five-year-old half sister, and they 
will have to get to know Taryn through pictures and stories 
from family.
    Fentanyl, as I think we all agree, robs children of their 
parents and parents of their children. They rob communities of 
our friends, co-workers, and neighbors.
    From 2014 to 2019 most fentanyl entered the U.S. by the 
international mail directly from China. Now it is being shipped 
from China to Mexico, manufacturing the pills at illegal labs 
and then smuggled across the border.
    The Mexican cartels have taken advantage of the weak border 
enforcement to surge a flow of fentanyl to the U.S. With border 
agents and local law enforcement overwhelmed by the surge of 
illegal immigration it is easier than ever for cartels to bring 
fentanyl into the U.S.
    Last year--last fiscal year, the CBP seized 14,700 pounds 
of fentanyl, and I can tell you as my experience as a governor 
in the last 2 years of my administration we saw the amounts of 
fentanyl, methamphetamine, and cocaine double, triple, 
quintuple as our state patrol confiscated it as it came through 
our state.
    Until the Biden administration takes action to secure our 
southern border to stop the flow of illegal immigration and 
drugs, I am afraid that this is going to be a bigger problem in 
the future.
    My question is for Dr. Gupta. CBP reported 156,274 
enforcement counters on the border only last month. With this 
large amount of unregulated activity and movement of people, is 
it even possible to stop the flow of fentanyl across the 
border?
    Do we need to stop the flow of illegal immigration first? 
It seems like either there is more drugs coming across the 
border or the Biden administration is not stopping those drugs 
coming across the border.
    What is the Biden administration's plan for this?
    Dr. Gupta. Thank you, Senator.
    The fact is all the elements we have we know that most of 
the drugs that are coming through are through ports of entry 
and it is through commercial traffic, it is through private 
traffic, and it is through individuals.
    We still do not scan enough of that traffic and that is 
where the President has talked about having--making sure that 
we have scanners, that we do have technology to place and scan 
every vehicle that needs scanning. We are not there yet. We 
want to be there, and that is the whole point.
    When we see increased fentanyl it is because we are 
applying technology and I want to see every port have that 
technology and be able to scan every vehicle that we can coming 
in.
    The problem, again, does not begin or end at the border. We 
got to be working at ports in Mexico, which we are with the 
Coast Guard, training SEMAR, the Mexican navy, to make sure 
that they are doing their job because they are the ones who 
have the control of the ports there to stop those shipments of 
precursors, but also the prepared product as well.
    Senator Ricketts. When I was down at the southern border a 
couple of times as governor, one of the things in talking to 
the folks down there they said is that the cartels will push 
across a group of illegal immigrants in one location, thus, 
drawing our resources off, and then push the fentanyl in a 
different location.
    Is that--so you are saying it is coming through the ports, 
but when I was on the border that is not what I was hearing 
when I was down there.
    Dr. Gupta. Senator, we have got to understand one basic 
pretext here. These are dispassionate businessmen, working men 
and women, working after--going after profit.
    They deploy these technologies and these tactics to do all 
of these things, and every time we seize we deny them the 
profits. The thing is these are calculated losses.
    Instead of going through the unforgiving terrain, they want 
their retail product to get in the market and make money for 
them as quickly as possible and that is where ports of entry 
make sense.
    What we have to do is deny them just enough so it is no 
longer profitable and it no longer supports their operating 
capital, and that is the strategy that it is important to 
understand that working where they are dependent upon their 
product to get through is exactly what needs to obstruct and 
disrupt that.
    Senator Ricketts. We have talked about the CCP and some of 
the supply chain there. What is the Biden administration's 
thought on how we stop the CCP from not only violating our 
airspace with spy balloons, but also on the precursors and this 
very deadly drug?
    Dr. Gupta. Senator, I have been several times to the border 
and will be going again. I have seen the tunnels--the 
subterranean tunnels--as well as marine drones and other 
aspects and, therefore, it becomes important that we provide 
those resources to our brave women and men at Custom Border 
Protection for both technology, infrastructure, as well as 
resources to be able to go after and that is exactly what the 
President will be asking for in his budget really soon.
    This is why having those 123 additional scanners--the large 
scanners--is going to be so important at our ports of entry as 
well.
    Senator Ricketts. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Senator Cardin.
    Senator Cardin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and let me assure 
my colleague from Nebraska, whether it is Nebraska or Maryland 
or any state in this country, the fentanyl crisis is a crisis 
and we are losing citizens every day to fentanyl, and the 
tragedy here is that there are a lot of innocent users that are 
dying from the fentanyl, not expecting it to be laced with 
fentanyl. This is an urgent issue in our nation.
    Chairman, thank you for holding an early hearing on this 
subject because it is not an easy issue. We always talk about 
supply and demand. Well, the demand side is a little bit 
challenging here because, as the senator from Nebraska pointed 
out, people do not expect that they are going to be dealing 
with a fentanyl-laced product.
    We will always deal with demand, but let us talk supply, 
and supply is complicated because we have the cartels and the 
distribution networks and then we have the supply of the 
precursors, which are taking over from the fentanyl itself 
being manufactured through the precursors.
    Ms. Milgram, you mentioned the cartels and your--you have a 
task force to deal with that. What do you need from us in order 
for us to be able to make a real impact on the viability of 
these cartels?
    They operate in trafficking of drugs and so many other 
activities, anything they can make money off of, but without 
the cartels the network would certainly be much less dangerous 
to our country.
    Ms. Milgram. Thank you, Senator.
    Let me start by actually thanking Congress. We were very 
pleased and we feel fortunate to have gotten additional funding 
from Congress in the last budget--$40 million--that allows us 
to expand our counter threat teams that we are operating 
worldwide to target these two cartels.
    It also allows us to build vital infrastructure around data 
and technology to integrate all the information we have at DEA 
and so, first, let me say thank you for that.
    Second, as you point out, a couple of things. The first is 
that right now we have pivoted to a world of synthetic drugs 
where the fentanyl we are talking about and the methamphetamine 
we are talking about that is made by these two cartels--Sinaloa 
and Jalisco--it is entirely manmade and right now there is no 
limit on how much of those drugs can be made. The only limit 
are the amount of precursor chemicals that the cartels can get 
access to.
    First of all, working to have China do more to stop----
    Senator Cardin. I want to get to the precursors, and the 
challenge here--you may want to elaborate and others might want 
to also, particularly Ambassador Robinson, on this--but these 
are--the precursors are now coming in from various countries.
    I understand India is becoming a major source also of 
precursor drugs. They have lawful purposes, but they have 
illegal purposes, meaning put together for fentanyl.
    How do we get a handle on the precursors when it seems like 
the illegal traffickers are one step ahead of us? As we clamp 
down on fentanyl coming in they, move to the precursors that 
manufactured the fentanyl.
    Mr. Robinson. Senator, thank you. Thank you so much for the 
question, and you hit on an important topic.
    We--the United States Government, the Administration--are 
working aggressively engaging with our European partners. We 
are working quite closely with India.
    We do not see, in fact, precursors, largely, coming from 
India to Mexico to make fentanyl. It is almost exclusively 
distributors from China and, in fact, the Indians have been--
the Indian Government has been positive on this issue. They are 
working with us in the G-20.
    We are in discussions about setting up a counter narcotics 
working group during their presidency of the G-20. We are 
engaged with the international community both on a multilateral 
level with the U.N. in Vienna at the CND, but also on a 
bilateral level with countries like India and individual 
European countries.
    The last thing I would say, though, is for the United 
States fentanyl is the problem. For Europe, it is 
methamphetamines. For Africa, it is tramadol.
    The issue of synthetic opioids--opioids in general--is a 
global issue and has a lot of different layers. They are all 
engaged at some level, both bilaterally and internationally, in 
engaging and addressing it.
    Senator Cardin. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Senator Hagerty.
    Senator Hagerty. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I am looking at the leaders of the effort that is supposed 
to be stopping drugs in America. I just got off the phone the 
other day with a father from my home state of Tennessee who 
found his son dead on Thanksgiving morning. Dead from fentanyl.
    Each of the three of you have been charged with addressing 
this scourge, yet it continues to run rampant. The number-one 
killer of Americans today, of young people between the ages of 
18 and 45, is drug overdose, most of it fentanyl coming across 
our southern border being supplied by China, just as Secretary 
Robinson mentioned. China is the principal source of these drug 
precursors that are going to the Mexican cartels.
    Dr. Gupta, you have mentioned this. In August, you stated 
that fentanyl will continue to flood the world unless China 
stops drug trafficking. Indeed, I want to use your quote: 
``China's decision to refuse cooperation in this issue will 
result in more American deaths.''
    Dr. Gupta, has China done enough to stop the transport of 
fentanyl precursors from China to Mexico? I would appreciate a 
yes or no answer.
    Dr. Gupta. No, Senator.
    Senator Hagerty. I agree. Is pressing the Chinese Communist 
Party to stop fentanyl precursors coming from China a top 
Administration priority? Again, I would appreciate a yes or no 
answer.
    Dr. Gupta. Senator, it is.
    Senator Hagerty. I am glad to hear that.
    Dr. Gupta, the White House issued a press release last week 
on its proposals for cracking down on fentanyl trafficking. 
Yet, not once--not once--in the entire press release was China 
mentioned.
    Moreover, during the State of the Union, not once did the 
President call out China's role in this fentanyl crisis. If 
getting China to stop fentanyl production that is killing 
hundreds of Americans daily is a top priority, then why did 
President Biden not mention it at the State of the Union?
    Dr. Gupta. Senator, if I can elaborate.
    This is one of the top priority issues both for the 
President and for myself. I have had a conversation with 
Secretary Blinken for whom it also remains a top issue as well.
    Senator Hagerty. I certainly do not see that from Secretary 
Blinken either. Less than a week before his planned trip to 
China--before the Secretary's planned trip to China--the 
Treasury Department rolled out sanctions against Mexican drug 
cartels that are involved in the exportation of fentanyl and 
precursors that end up in the United States.
    The Treasury Department in this press release explicitly 
called out China's role in supplying these precursors to 
Mexican drug lords. However, the Secretary of State's parallel 
press statement omitted any mention of China.
    Assistant Secretary Robinson, for the record, was there any 
internal disagreement or debate between your bureau, the Bureau 
of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, which 
you lead, and the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs on 
whether or not to omit any mention of China in Secretary 
Blinken's press statement? Please give me a yes or no answer.
    Mr. Robinson. No.
    Senator Hagerty. No debate? No discussion?
    Mr. Robinson. Oh, there was debate. There was discussion, 
but, at the end of the day, we agreed on the statement that the 
Secretary----
    Senator Hagerty. With no mention of China in it.
    While the Biden administration increasingly self-censors 
itself on China's role in America's fentanyl crisis, China's 
ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, who is now the 
foreign minister, falsely claimed last year that China has 
``done everything possible on our end,'' using his words, ``out 
of goodwill to help the United States address this problem.''
    How can the Administration continue to pursue meetings with 
China to develop a so-called floor in the relationship when 
China so obviously lies about its involvement and refuses to 
stop the flow of fentanyl?
    In addition to securing and defending our open southern 
border we have got to hold the CCP accountable. Does anybody 
have an answer about why we continue to do this?
    Mr. Robinson. I would say that we are working aggressively 
to engage China on this issue at a number of levels, but as I 
mentioned earlier, the relationship with China is complicated. 
We have a number of issues to discuss with them and there is no 
doubt----
    Senator Hagerty. I will interrupt you because the number-
one issue we have just established--a top priority for this 
Administration--is dealing with the poisoning of our kids.
    Mr. Robinson. Absolutely.
    Senator Hagerty. Yet, we are not going to call them out. We 
are not going to mention it. That seems to be the priority. 
Treasury will, but the State Department will not.
    Mr. Robinson. We are going to work as hard as we can to 
engage with the PRC multilaterally and bilaterally if possible 
to address this issue.
    Senator Hagerty. If the State Department and the White 
House will not call out this problem, we will never address it. 
We will never----
    Dr. Gupta. Senator, I have called them out publicly after 
Speaker Pelosi's visit when they stopped cooperation. We are 
going to continue to do that. We are going to continue to 
pressure them, including using sanctions authority.
    Senator Hagerty. I encourage you to do that, but I 
encourage you to get the Commander-in-Chief to call it out and 
I encourage our top diplomat to call it out, too.
    Mr. Chairman, I would like to enter all these documents for 
the record.
    The Chairman. Without objection.

[Editor's note.--The information referred to above can be found 
in the ``Additional Material Submitted for the Record'' section 
at the end of this hearing.]

    The Chairman. Senator Shaheen.
    Senator Shaheen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for 
holding this hearing as--and thank you to our witnesses for 
your testimony this morning.
    As you can tell, this is an issue that is very personal for 
everyone on this committee because we see--Administrator 
Milgram, you talked about the faces of those killed by 
fentanyl. We see that in our home states every day.
    In New Hampshire's largest city of Manchester since the 
beginning of February, we have 10 overdose deaths from fentanyl 
and what we are seeing now is an increasing number of cases 
related to xylazine, which is an animal tranquilizer that is 
being cut into drugs, including fentanyl, and unlike opioids 
there is no reverse agent like narcan to reverse those 
overdoses.
    Can you tell me, Administrator Milgram, does the DEA have a 
position on scheduling drugs like xylazine that are used for 
legitimate medical purposes, but that are being used illicitly 
and what is your position on that?
    Ms. Milgram. Senator, thank you so much for that question.
    We are tracking xylazine across the United States and there 
is no question that it is an increasing threat. We are seeing 
it cut into fentanyl powder in almost every state in the 
country at this moment in time and what we see is that 
fentanyl, which is the deadliest drug we have ever seen in the 
United States, it is now being made deadlier by xylazine being 
combined with it.
    We asked HHS about 15 months ago to begin the process of 
scheduling xylazine. I would defer to them on the timing of 
that scheduling, but what I can tell you is we are looking----
    Senator Shaheen. Did you--excuse me for interrupting.
    Eighteen 18 months ago, did you say?
    Ms. Milgram. Fifteen months ago we sent a request to HHS to 
schedule. We then last fall sent a follow-up request with 
additional information of what we were seeing.
    At this moment, my belief is that we have to do everything 
we can internally at DEA to stop this threat from happening and 
my commitment to you is we will do everything we can to stop 
it.
    Senator Shaheen. Thank you.
    Mr. Chairman, I would argue that this committee may want to 
take a position on that with the FDA and HHS to schedule this 
when it is being used illicitly.
    I want to go back to Senator Risch's and others' comment 
about social media because that, to me, is the most insidious 
aspect of what we are seeing right now because social media 
platforms--Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram--they are all being used 
to market and sell pills that are laced with fentanyl.
    Right now, Senator Marshall and I have a piece of 
legislation named after a young man from Kansas who, much like 
Senator Ricketts' housewife, used--bought a fake prescription 
online on Snapchat. He thought it was percocet. He took a half 
a pill and he died. I think we have got to do more to force our 
social media companies to be responsible.
    Can I ask each of you what you are doing? I appreciate, 
Secretary Robinson, that this is not necessarily your area of 
responsibility, but it seems to me much as we are talking about 
we have got--how we have to engage globally that we also have 
to engage all of the ways in which people are getting access to 
fentanyl and illicit drugs.
    What are each of you doing to engage the social media 
companies and what should we be doing as Congress to shut down 
these platforms that are being used to sell drugs?
    Dr. Gupta. I will start. Senator, thank you.
    Clearly, there is a lot more that social media platforms 
can do. President Biden called them out for big tech in the 
State of the Union last Tuesday. We are looking forward to 
working with you--Congress--to figure out what those solutions 
are.
    It is fairly clear when illegal activity happens on those 
platforms that cannot be tolerated any longer. We are looking 
forward to working with you on that.
    Senator Shaheen. Administrator.
    Ms. Milgram. Thank you, Senator.
    We have told the social media companies that American lives 
are being lost because of what is happening on their platforms 
and we have asked them to do more.
    We have not seen them doing more. I would welcome the 
opportunity, DEA would welcome the opportunity, to work with 
this committee and others on the Hill to get to what I think 
are the two core goals.
    One is accountability. Right now, we are not seeing 
sufficient accountability for the lives being lost.
    The second is full transparency. As I sit here today, 
Senator, I cannot tell you how the algorithms operate on any of 
these social media platforms. I cannot explain the algorithms 
that are connecting the traffickers--the cartels--with 
potential buyers. I cannot tell you the algorithms that those 
companies are using to purportedly remove illegal content.
    What I can tell you--and I also cannot tell you how many 
people they have working for their social media companies that 
are actively engaged on these issues.
    What I can tell you is that on a regular basis we are on 
these social media websites platforms and we are seeing drug 
marketing and drug sales for these fake prescription pills--
fake oxys, fake adderall, fake percocet--that have been up for 
months. For months.
    We know enough is not being--whatever the social media 
companies are doing, it is nowhere near enough to save lives.
    Senator Shaheen. Thank you very much.
    Secretary Robinson.
    Mr. Robinson. Senator, thank you so much for that question.
    I would just add that we understand the social media 
platforms play a role, but it is e-commerce across the board. 
It is freight forwarders across the board. It is chemical 
producers, both globally and internally, across the board.
    The private sector, across the board, has a responsibility 
and I look forward to working with my colleagues both here at 
the table and within the inner agency in getting at that 
responsibility and engaging with the private sector on this 
issue.
    Senator Shaheen. I certainly agree with you it is broader, 
but my grandchildren are not on those commercial websites on a 
daily basis. They are on the social media sites.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. I hope we could get Americans to understand 
do not buy your pills on social media as a general proposition. 
We should be doing an education campaign to that effect because 
if that is where you revert to then the integrity of the 
product can never be guaranteed, at the end of the day.
    Senator Scott.
    Senator Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you all for being here this morning to talk about 
such an important issue that is impacting so many Americans 
around this country and that we all recognize the 107,000-plus 
deaths because of overdoses and how tragic it is.
    So often we talk about the numbers without really 
appreciating the personal impact that it is having on families 
throughout this country, devastation from West Virginia to 
South Carolina, and I just think we have to do more to close 
our southern borders, stop fentanyl from coming across the 
border and killing American lives in such a way that has been 
devastating to families.
    A friend of mine just Saturday before last buried his son--
27-year-old son--because of fentanyl, and too often we see 
these issues as large numbers--107,000 Americans. We think 
about the thousands in South Carolina, but we do not think 
about the actual tragedy, it seems like, to the average family 
that loses a loved one.
    There is no family in this nation that is disconnected from 
the issue of fentanyl and we should do more. We can do more and 
I believe it starts with our southern border.
    If we close our southern border, stop fentanyl from coming 
across, we could end the devastation and the tragedy that is 
being experienced by so many American families.
    I just want to read what Alan Shao, who is the former dean 
of the business school at the College of Charleston in my 
hometown--a longtime friend of mine--that what he said about 
his son at his son's funeral:

        ``To my loving son, Alan. The day you were born was the 
        day I gained a son. You were by far the most beautiful 
        baby out of everyone. You looked at me and gave me a 
        big smile. I knew that my life was complete with you as 
        my child.

        ``We named you Alan after me, of course, because you 
        stole my heart with such a loving force. As the years 
        went by and you grew to play sports, in my eyes you 
        were the best on all fields and all courts. I was 
        always so proud of you as my son that no matter the 
        score we always knew that we won.

        ``The years kept on passing. Our family went separate 
        ways, but you and I never did. We were together to 
        stay. You eventually went to college, even got your 
        degree. I was such a proud father as proud as could be.

        ``Well, we went through hard times and good times over 
        the years, often ending up with a hug and a whole lot 
        of tears. Now for the hard part. To even speak breaks 
        my heart.

        ``A few days ago, I learned the worst news I could 
        imagine. You left me too soon and went on to heaven. I 
        want you to know, son, that I will join you someday. I 
        cannot wait to see you. We will hold hands and we will 
        pray.

        ``But for now, I will have a broken heart that will 
        never ever mend. So I will just live my life until I 
        see you again. I love you, Alan.''

    Too many of these stories, of these words, are being spoken 
at too many funerals. Completely avoidable.
    Dr. Gupta, what are we going to do to close our southern 
border so that we can stop hearing fathers bury their sons, 
mothers burying their kids? I think it is very much avoidable.
    Dr. Gupta. Senator Scott, thank you for those beautiful 
words and, obviously, every tragedy, every single tragedy, what 
it is we are talking about it is important.
    I am a father of two 25-year-old boys and I know I talk to 
them every day because of that. I think when--this is exactly 
how I approach the job is just to figure out where all we can 
do and what we can do.
    This is the reason that we are pushing for a global 
commercial disruption concept to deny profits, to make sure 
that we take data, take evidence where it exists, and act on 
it, act on it not worrying about what is in the past.
    This is why, as a majority of that--the drugs come through 
the ports of entry, there is technology that we can adopt and 
they can magnify resources, infrastructure, that could put--
that will help us detect as much fentanyl as possible we can, 
and this is exactly what the President is calling out for, 
making sure that we have those scanners--they can have the 
technology.
    Senator Scott. Mr. Chairman, in my last seconds left I 
would just say that we have to do more and technology is one 
way of doing more, but the truth of the matter is until we 
close our border this issue continues without the physical 
impediments to be in the place where we cannot have technology, 
where we cannot have people, we need to actually do everything 
in our power to change the course of American history.
    I think we can do that. We should take it as a bipartisan 
challenge. Thank you. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Scott.
    As I turn to Senator Kaine, let me just--for the record, I 
asked questions at the beginning of this hearing and I have my 
own answers based upon the information, and I would like to 
include it in the record because I think it creates context for 
our discussion.
    According to the bipartisan Commission on Combating 
Synthetic Opioid Trafficking, Mexican cartels traffic illicit 
fentanyl into the United States primarily via established ports 
of entry at the southwestern border, and according to CBP data 
in fiscal year 2022, roughly 85 percent of all fentanyl 
seizures occurring at the southwestern border of the United 
States occurred at ports of entry through tractor-trailer 
trucks and passenger vehicles.
    When we talk about doing more, making sure that those ports 
of entries have the technology that can be invasive so that 85 
percent of all of that fentanyl can be stopped is a huge 
reality.
    I think it is important to know where the process of how 
the entry of the fentanyl into the United States is taking 
place so that we can ultimately combat it.
    Senator Kaine.
    Senator Kaine. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I would just like 
to pick up on that and on Senator Scott's request, hey, can we 
not find a bipartisan path forward.
    We should be able to invest more in ports of entry to get a 
lot more fentanyl before it crosses the border. There is sort 
of a lottery situation where we can only inspect one out of 
every so many vehicles and the cartels know that and they do 
not mind somebody getting caught and going to prison as long as 
they can get a lot of other fentanyl through the ports of 
border.
    I am sure hoping that the President's budget that comes 
over here next month asks Congress to do a robust investment in 
border security at ports of entry because CBP is pioneering 
technologies that have shown that they can work, but we just 
have to do it with all vehicles and do it in a prompt way so 
that we can pick up more.
    I want to thank the CBP agents. When you look at the amount 
that has been interdicted either at the border by CBP agents or 
by the HIDTA task forces internally, you want to thank those 
folks, but you also want to say as bad as this is hundreds of 
thousands more pounds of these drugs had they not been 
interdicted in that way by these public servants how much worse 
it would be.
    The other bit of news, Dr. Gupta, that I was pleased to 
read in your testimony, and you mentioned it in your verbal 
testimony too, was that just as before COVID we were seeing 
overdose deaths coming down and then during COVID for a variety 
of reasons, including fentanyl, but other reasons as well--the 
isolation of COVID--we saw overdose deaths go back up.
    You now have indicated at least preliminary data suggests 
that for the last 5 months they have been coming down. Again, 
it is too soon to call it a trend, but we want to watch it and 
learn from it.
    In Virginia, we will expect about 2,500 fentanyl deaths 
this year and, Senator Scott, what he read from his friend, I 
mean, this--there are these funerals happening multiple, 
multiple times a day.
    I am particularly--I guess I want to ask you, Dr. Milgram--
Secretary Milgram--about kids. The kids get drugs and often 
accidentally overdose because they think they are getting an 
Adderall or they think they are getting something else and it 
is cut with fentanyl.
    You mentioned in your testimony the One Pill Can Kill 
campaign. Tell us more about that campaign and are you seeing 
it as a success? Because, clearly, if we cannot make people 
aware of the danger and curb demand that way there will always 
be a supplier who will be creative. What can we do on the 
demand side? One Pill Can Kill is designed to address that.
    Ms. Milgram. Thank you. Thank you so much, Senator, for 
that question.
    At this moment in time, we believe that public awareness is 
one of the most vital things that we can do. We have a very 
hardened senior agent in charge in the United States who said 
to me not too long ago that if he had an hour of time right now 
and he had to choose between putting handcuffs on someone or 
doing public awareness, right now he would do public awareness 
because still too many Americans do not understand the dangers.
    We launched the One Pill Can Kill campaign in the fall of 
2021 and we have done enforcement actions as well and we have 
seized pills across the United States in all 50 states to 
highlight this work.
    We also give that campaign to anyone and everyone who wants 
it. We have intentionally not branded it from DEA or DOJ, and 
so we have a university in the Midwest that just launched it.
    We have a police department in Florida that has taken it on 
and we have countless families and parents who have lost their 
children who have taken the One Pill Can Kill campaign and all 
the materials we have.
    We have also started meeting with families who have lost 
loved ones, and last year for the first time we did nationwide 
family summits on drug poisoning deaths. Again, trying to 
understand from the families what information would be vital 
for them to have known and to have had to make sure that their 
loved ones knew of the threat.
    I believe, Senator, as I sit here that the cartels are 
acting with deliberate, calculated treachery. They make these 
pills, buying pill presses and dyes and die molds, mostly from 
China as well, that look identical to the real pharmaceutical 
medicines.
    Senator Kaine. Let me ask you sort of a data question. In 
the data about overdose deaths, do we closely track those that 
are accidental--someone thought they were taking something else 
and it turned out that it was laced with fentanyl?
    Because obviously any death through an overdose is a 
tragedy but the strategy for dealing with the accidentals is a 
little bit different than the strategy for dealing with people 
who might have become a patient taking prescribed opioids and 
then they go into fentanyl.
    Do we track that data?
    Ms. Milgram. Two pieces. One is if you listen to the 
language I use today, I do not use the term overdose anymore 
and that is because of the time I have spent with the families 
who have lost loved ones.
    So many Americans are dying right now and they are dying 
because fentanyl is cut into other drugs that they are taking 
or it is in a fake prescription pill.
    Senator Kaine. Overdose suggests you were taking something 
and maybe you took too much, but actually it is accidental. 
They were not intending to take fentanyl or a opioid at all.
    Ms. Milgram. We think that using the term ``drug 
poisoning,'' whatever is happening, the fentanyl is actually 
poisoning people's bodies and so we prefer to talk about it now 
as drug poisoning.
    Senator Kaine. I am over time, but do you track that data? 
If so, I am going to ask that follow-up. I will ask that for 
the record. I want to yield back to the chair.
    Ms. Milgram. Yes.
    The Chairman. Senator Cruz.
    Senator Cruz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Administrator Milgram, would you agree that the vast 
majority of the heroin and the methamphetamine and fentanyl we 
see in American communities comes from Mexico?
    Ms. Milgram. Senator, I would say that the vast majority of 
fentanyl and meth is coming from the two cartels, Jalisco and 
Sinaloa, from Mexico. They also transport heroin and cocaine 
in.
    I would not say the vast majority of heroin and cocaine. I 
would say the vast majority of fentanyl and meth.
    Senator Cruz. Would you also agree that the brave men and 
women working along the southern border and at our ports of 
entry--our Border Patrol and CBP officers--serve a critical 
role in interdicting drugs before they hit our streets?
    Ms. Milgram. Senator, as I say often, the way--at DEA we 
are the single--the only single mission federal law enforcement 
agency committed to narcotics and to stopping the global supply 
chain. We play offense and so we are tracking these cartels 
worldwide and across our----
    Senator Cruz. Is that a yes? We have got limited time.
    Ms. Milgram. DHS' responsibility is to maintain the 
southern border and the ports of entry. Our investigations do 
tell us that the vast majority of fentanyl is coming in the 
ports of entry, two particularly in California and two in 
Arizona.
    Senator Cruz. Is that a yes? That you would agree that CBP 
officers both on the southern border and the ports of entry 
play a critical role in interdicting drugs?
    Ms. Milgram. Yes, Senator. I believe it is a DHS 
responsibility and it is a critical one.
    Senator Cruz. If we decided to cut the number of Border 
Patrol agents dramatically, let us say, in half, would you 
agree that would hurt our efforts to stop illegal drugs?
    Ms. Milgram. Senator, I would defer some of this to the 
Department of Homeland Security and Secretary Mayorkas.
    Senator Cruz. You are not willing to answer that question?
    Ms. Milgram. Here is what I would say about this. We 
believe that DHS plays vital defense.
    Senator Cruz. Okay. Those are talking points. Would cutting 
the number of CBP agents in half hurt our ability to stop 
drugs, yes or no?
    Ms. Milgram. Senator, I believe it would.
    Senator Cruz. Okay. That is effectively what has happened 
under the Biden administration because right now today more 
than half of the CBP agents are engaged in housekeeping and 
chauffeurs and babysitting of the 5.5 million illegal aliens 
who have crossed the border.
    They are not on the border. They are not at the ports of 
entry. They are instead processing the highest rate of illegal 
immigration in history.
    Now, Democrat members of Congress have the remarkable claim 
that the open borders under Joe Biden has no impact on the 
record fentanyl and drugs that are flooding across our borders.
    Between October 2021 and September 2022, one CBP source 
estimated there were 364,000 gotaways, people that ran away at 
the southern border. Another Border Patrol official put the 
number of gotaways at 1.2 million.
    Gotaways can vary from terrorists on the terror watch 
list--in fiscal year 2022, 98 people on the terror watch list 
were encountered at the southern border that we know of--or 
they can be drug dealers carrying drugs. Is that correct?
    Ms. Milgram. Senator, I am going to defer questions on the 
border and the ports of entry to the Department of Homeland 
Security.
    Senator Cruz. The DEA has no view on whether drug dealers 
crossing the border carry drugs?
    Ms. Milgram. Senator, as I said from our investigations, 
what we see is that the majority of fentanyl coming into the 
United States----
    Senator Cruz. I did not ask the majority. I said drug 
dealers and gotaways are carrying drugs, many of them.
    Ms. Milgram. Senator, what we see is mostly interdict--what 
we see is mostly tractor-trailers and personal vehicles.
    Senator Cruz. All right. You are sticking to the talking 
points closely, and congratulations. It is the Democrat talking 
points, that the open borders do not matter, that 328,000 or 
1.2 million gotaways do not matter. We had a hundred thousand 
people die last year of drug overdoses. My sister died of a 
drug overdose just over a decade ago.
    This is a crisis, but it is a man-made crisis. This 
Administration made a conscious political decision to open the 
borders and one of the results is they have turned Mexican drug 
cartels into multi-billionaires.
    In 2018, the amount of money cartels made from human 
trafficking, according to The New York Times, was $500 million. 
Now, just from human trafficking, the cartels are making $13 
billion a year--again, according to The New York Times. That is 
a 2,600 percent increase.
    Administrator Milgram, the single best thing that happened 
to Mexican drug cartels in history was Joe Biden becoming 
President, opening the border, and making tens of billions of 
dollars for these vicious criminals.
    In your judgment, is it a good thing that these cartels now 
have tens of billions of dollars from human trafficking and 
drug trafficking?
    Ms. Milgram. Senator Cruz, I really appreciate the 
opportunity to answer your question, and as I have said clearly 
and will continue to say, there are two cartels in Mexico, the 
Sinaloa and Jalisco cartel, that are responsible for the 
devastation that we are seeing on the streets of our country.
    It is our top operational priority----
    Senator Cruz. Would you answer the question?
    Ms. Milgram. --to defeat those two cartels and to stop the 
fentanyl and methamphetamine that is flooding into our 
communities.
    Senator Cruz. Would you answer the question I asked? Is it 
a good thing for them to have tens of billions of dollars now 
that they did not have?
    Ms. Milgram. Senator, we are doing everything we can----
    Senator Cruz. You are refusing to answer the question.
    Ms. Milgram. --to take every amount of money----
    Senator Cruz. This should not be a hard question for the 
DEA to answer.
    Ms. Milgram. If I--please, if I could finish.
    Senator Cruz. Please.
    Ms. Milgram. I very much understand your point. We believe 
that the cartels are making billions of dollars on illicit 
fentanyl.
    Senator Cruz. Is that good or bad?
    Ms. Milgram. It is a terrible thing.
    Senator Cruz. Okay. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Senator Merkley.
    Senator Merkley. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and 
thank you all.
    Mr. Robinson, the efforts have been talked about, about 
trying to stem the precursors from China to Mexico and 
everyone, I know, has raised it. Is there any other insights 
that you can share that you have not shared already with the 
committee about our efforts to stop this?
    China did respond when we pushed them hard on the direct 
sending of fentanyl into the United States. How do we now 
accomplish shutting them down on the precursors?
    Mr. Robinson. As I said earlier, we are going to continue 
to try to engage with the PRC on this issue, but the fact is 
because this is a global problem, other countries are engaging 
the PRC on this issue. We have had positive engagements with 
India, with Pakistan, with Mexico, with Canada. All of them 
have also pushed the PRC to do more to monitor the precursors 
leaving China.
    Senator Merkley. Okay. I am just--thank you very much, and 
I know you are pushing on this. It is a piece that seems so 
critical if we are going to stop the flow or reduce it greatly 
and I think we have already heard some comments about some 
other countries are starting to send precursors as well. It is 
a world challenge, but that is the biggest piece at the moment.
    I will tell you, every--I have had now 19 town halls this 
year in Oregon, 19 of the 36 counties. I do a town hall in 
every--this issue comes up everywhere. There are parents in 
every county who have lost their brothers or sisters or spouses 
or children to the contamination from fentanyl and that is just 
a horrific impact on America.
    I know that all of you are doing the best you can and I 
think the whole bipartisan effort here is to say, yes, keep 
going. We support you. How can we help you more.
    Administrator Milgram, I have statistics from the U.S. 
Sentencing Commission and I just wanted to see if they fit what 
you have in the DEA, and they say that the--from 2016-2021, the 

5-year average was that 90 percent of the fentanyl seized was 
from border crossings and interior vehicle checkpoints. Does 
that fit your understanding?
    Ms. Milgram. Senator, we--at DEA we do not have the 
specific information that CBP or Border Patrol would have. I 
could--we could ask the Department of Homeland Security and get 
back to you.
    Senator Merkley. Okay, because I think understanding the 
dynamics of where the drugs are coming and we have heard 
reference to the fact--Dr. Gupta, you were referring to the 
fact that the cartels want to move it fast and in what--and 
that the fast and most efficient way seems to be through border 
crossings and that statistic seems to back that up.
    The other thing that I found very surprising was according 
to the same stats from the Sentencing Commission, that 91 
percent of those seizures at the border are from U.S. citizens, 
and so I also just wanted to ask if you are familiar with that 
stat and if you consider it accurate.
    Ms. Milgram. Senator, again, DEA is not responsible for the 
border or the Border Patrol, but I am happy to ask.
    Senator Merkley. No, I sure understand that.
    Ms. Milgram. Yes.
    Senator Merkley. In drug enforcement you want to understand 
the issue and these are basic fundamental facts about the drug 
flow. So----
    Ms. Milgram. What we see, Senator, we see--basically, we 
see Americans and we see Mexicans and we see people. We 
interdict many. We are not responsible for the border.
    When we are doing investigations, we are generally doing 
them in the United States and, yes, we are making seizures of 
Americans as well as Mexican nationals.
    Senator Merkley. Dr. Gupta, that 90 percent, is that 
accurate? That most of the drug seizures are actually from U.S. 
citizens crossing?
    Dr. Gupta. Senator, I cannot vouch to the exact number, but 
the fact is that there is a lot of people that cross the border 
every day, just a matter of work, going to work, and those 
people, wittingly or unwittingly, often end up and that is 
why--but it is still ports of entry that they are entering 
through.
    Senator Merkley. Okay. I am surprised that given our effort 
to understand the challenge that neither of you kind of have 
the firm grip on the dynamics at the border. I just want to 
encourage you to expand your horizon to understanding those 
pieces because it is such an important part of the 
conversation.
    I wanted to turn to the social media challenge, and so is 
it basically that our youth are finding contacts through social 
media and then those contacts have a supply chain to where they 
can deliver to the door or how does that work?
    Ms. Milgram. We see a number of different things on social 
media, Senator, in our work.
    One of the things we see are, for example, the cartels 
recruiting couriers or others to sell narcotics in the United 
States. We also see many instances that are exactly as you 
describe where you have someone who is on social media and 
within three or four clicks will connect with someone selling.
    Often what we see are fake pills. They are meant to look 
exactly like they were oxycodone, but they are fentanyl and 
filler, and that those pills are then delivered to their home 
or their office or their front door by someone that they do not 
know within often minutes or hours.
    Senator Merkley. Thank you. My time is up. I really 
appreciate you all doing everything you can to tackle this 
incredibly horrific challenge decimating America's families.
    Senator Booker [presiding]. Senator Young.
    Senator Young. Thank you, Chairman. I thank our witnesses 
for being here today.
    This is an issue that is important to thousands of my 
constituents. Right now, 85 percent of all drug deaths in the 
state of Indiana are as a result of fentanyl and I am deeply 
concerned about the gaps along our southern border. A number of 
my colleagues have asked about those. I know that invokes the 
responsibility of Mexico where the cartels have a significant 
presence.
    It is China that is one of the top producers of these 
active pharmaceutical ingredients that go into the production 
of fentanyl. Of course, those inputs are--exist for licit 
purposes, but are diverted criminally for illicit purposes of 
producing fentanyl.
    You have stated clearly, Administrator Milgram, that your 
top priority is dealing with the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels in 
Mexico. Given the role of the People's Republic of China in 
terms of production of these raw materials, that seems to be a 
really important line of effort as well. You did mention this 
in your opening statement.
    Is it your agency's assessment that we are going to be able 
to stop the cartels from getting these precursor chemicals from 
the People's Republic of China?
    Ms. Milgram. Thank you for the question, Senator.
    When I talk about DEA's network-wide approach, I am 
including the facilitators in China, whether it is Chinese 
chemical companies or Chinese nationals, chemical brokers, or 
illicit finance people operating in China, the U.S., or Mexico.
    Just to make sure that I am accurately explaining, our top 
operational goal is to defeat the two cartels and their 
criminal networks and those networks are not just the command 
and control----
    Senator Young. They extend into China. Right.
    Ms. Milgram. Exactly. Those partnerships, we--DEA 
investigation was just unsealed last week. It is a Chinese 
national, Carlos Algredo, who was a precursor chemical broker 
operating from Mexico.
    He is alleged to have basically taken precursor chemicals 
from China and India into Mexico so that the Jalisco cartel 
could make them.
    Senator Young. Okay. I have limited time, but I thought it 
was really important that Dr. Gupta mentioned that China has 
been unwilling to engage with us on this topic.
    The Chinese Government, they are part of the network if 
they are going to allow this to happen without intervention. 
The ranking member mentioned that fentanyl did not even come up 
during the President's conversation with Xi Jinping.
    I think that is a notable failure to bring up something 
that is a top priority of my constituents. The President's 
State of the Union address, he mentioned fentanyl, commendably, 
but failed to call out China's role in production of fentanyl.
    We are clearly facing a lot of challenges vis-a-vis the 
Chinese Communist Party. I acknowledge that. What actions 
diplomatic or otherwise have we taken against China for their 
failure to meaningfully engage?
    Mr. Robinson. Thank you, Senator, for that question.
    Number one, we do continue to engage or try to engage with 
the PRC on various levels. We are also talking to other 
countries to see if they can engage with China on a number of 
levels.
    We have identified--as Administrator Milgram has noted, we 
have identified businesses in China that we know are working 
with the cartels----
    Senator Young. I am coming to the end of--but the Chinese 
Government has not engaged. I know we have tried to engage. You 
deserve credit for that.
    What has been the consequences to the Chinese Government 
for their failure to engage with us about the shipment of 
precursor fentanyl-producing agents into Mexico that end up in 
Indiana and kill 85 percent of people who die of drug deaths?
    Mr. Robinson. As I was going to say, we will use every tool 
in our toolbox, including rewards programs--the narcotics 
rewards programs and the transnational organized crime rewards 
programs--to go after those entities in China that are moving 
these chemicals.
    The fact is China wants to be on the world stage and in 
order to do that, because this is a global problem, other 
countries are also going to push them to do the right thing on 
this issue.
    Senator Young. You will use. That is prospective.
    Mr. Robinson. No, we are using.
    Senator Young. You are using?
    Mr. Robinson. We are using. Yes.
    Senator Young. Okay. What leverage have we brought to bear 
against the Chinese Government themselves to shape their future 
risk calculus and decision-making framework so that they can 
cooperate with us to prevent these shipments in the first 
place?
    Mr. Robinson. We are going to continue to push for 
engagement. We have worked with them just last year in a 
multilateral forum to schedule three precursor chemicals. We 
will continue to do what it takes to bring China back to the 
table.
    Senator Young. Should we expect President Biden to bring 
this issue to the attention of--and his concerns--directly to 
Xi Jinping?
    Mr. Robinson. There should be no doubt that this is a 
priority, a topic of concern, for this President, for the 
Secretary of State, to get at both directly with the PRC and in 
a global effort bringing together other countries to get at 
this issue as well.
    Senator Young. Thank you, sir. I am going to stay on top of 
this.
    Senator Booker. Senator Van Hollen.
    Senator Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank all of 
you for your testimony here today and for your service.
    As you have heard and I am sure you know, everybody on this 
dais has met a family that has lost a loved one to opioids. 
Probably the same is true for all of you as well.
    In Maryland, for the most recent 12 months of reporting 
that is available, we had 2,487 fatal overdoses and fentanyl 
was involved in over 80 percent of those.
    That is the--those are the numbers in Maryland. Behind 
those numbers, obviously, is a family that has lost a loved one 
and that is magnified throughout the country.
    I would like to follow up on some of the questions my 
colleagues have asked. We have had a lot of questions today.
    Director Gupta, I think it is important that you get back 
to the committee on this issue of where most of the fentanyl is 
crossing the border of the United States and how because the 
figures we have seen from the Customs and Border Patrol 
indicate that 90 percent, as Senator Merkley indicated, is 
coming over legal crossing points and interior vehicle 
checkpoints.
    You cannot confirm that today? Is that your testimony?
    Dr. Gupta. What I can confirm, Senator Van Hollen, is that 
we know that overall majority and 90 percent--not individual 
carriers, but overall through the ports of entry is where it is 
coming.
    Senator Van Hollen. Right, in terms of the volume of 
fentanyl, over 90 percent is coming through ports of entry?
    Dr. Gupta. Correct. Right.
    Senator Van Hollen. I think that is important because we 
have an important discussion on immigration and immigration 
reform, but fentanyl comes in very potent small quantities 
potentially, right? I mean, a very little bit can kill you.
    What it indicates to me is we need to do even more at our 
ports of entry to try to detect and intercept fentanyl and we 
have been working to provide additional resources to do exactly 
that.
    Now, to my knowledge, we do not have a similar problem with 
fentanyl crossing our northern border. Is that correct?
    Dr. Gupta. Correct.
    Senator Van Hollen. Right. Which gets to the question of 
why. We have heard about China's involvement with the 
precursors and we absolutely need to insist that they engage in 
that conversation with us.
    It also indicates that the drug cartels in Mexico are out 
of control and it would suggest, as you said, Administrator 
Milgram, that not enough is being done by the Government of 
Mexico to crack down on these cartels and that in the past when 
there has been a will to do it we have seen results.
    I understand that was something you stated earlier. Is that 
right?
    Ms. Milgram. Yes, Senator. We believe that Mexico was very 
effective at taking down the Zetas cartel between 2012 and 2015 
and that they absolutely have the capability, and would welcome 
working with them to take down these two cartels.
    Senator Van Hollen. When you raise this with them and you 
point to their earlier success and determination to take down 
cartels and point out that that is not happening now, what is 
their response?
    Ms. Milgram. When we work with--and I would defer a little 
bit on this to the secretary.
    Senator Van Hollen. I would--Secretary Robinson, if you 
want to--yes.
    Mr. Robinson. Senator, what I would say is I think the 
Mexican Government is very aware of the mal-influence of the 
cartels in Mexico. They have resource issues, but the Lopez 
Obrador government has made some decisions on law enforcement 
that have engaged the military at ports of entry.
    There are other parts of the Mexican Government that can 
definitely do more and we will, working with our ambassador and 
our team in Mexico City, push them to do more.
    Senator Van Hollen. All right. I think, again, if you look 
at their past success compared to what is happening now it does 
indicate, to me anyway, that if they are determined to do it 
they can do a better job than they are now.
    The last question relates to something Senator Shaheen 
brought up regarding this new ingredient that is mixed into 
fentanyl and opioids, xylazine, also known as ``tranq.'' I 
think that is the street name.
    This has become a big issue in parts of Maryland and 
throughout the country. I heard what you said, Madam 
Administrator, about asking the Department of Health and Human 
Services to list them.
    Where is--so there are legal uses to this, obviously, but 
where is it being diverted, to the best of our knowledge? Who 
is diverting it to these bad purposes?
    Ms. Milgram. Thank you for the question, Senator.
    I should have clarified this before with Senator Shaheen. 
There are no lawful uses for humans. There are lawful uses for 
veterinarians----
    Senator Van Hollen. Yes.
    Ms. Milgram. --and it is called tranq because it is a horse 
tranquilizer and is being sold throughout the country as--for 
veterinarians.
    What we are doing right now at DEA is we are looking 
internally at every authority that we potentially have to 
address this issue.
    Senator Van Hollen. Right. Just in terms of the tranq, do 
you--have you been able to identify where it is being diverted? 
As you say, there are legal veterinarian purposes for this, 
but, obviously, it is being diverted to other uses. Do you have 
any guide, any leads, as to who is doing that?
    Ms. Milgram. Senator, I cannot discuss investigations and I 
apologize for that, but I can tell you that we are actively 
working on this issue.
    Senator Van Hollen. Okay. Thank you.
    The Chairman [presiding]. Thank you.
    Senator Booker.
    Senator Booker. Mr. Chairman, we are having a hearing on 
countering illicit fentanyl trafficking. A lot of my colleagues 
have seemed to be focusing on the real substantive challenges 
we have at the border.
    I think it was suggested earlier that we close the border, 
but we know that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas 
said that it is unequivocally false that fentanyl is being 
brought to the United States by noncitizens encountered between 
the ports of entry who are making claims of credible fear and 
seeking asylum.
    The problem at the border is real. It spiked tremendously 
under the Trump administration relative to the Obama 
administration, but in a hearing about fentanyl, when there is 
nobody from Customs and Border Patrol here, to try to say that 
this--that folks coming to our border seeking asylum or 
seeking--escaping challenges, to say that that is the center of 
the fentanyl crisis is just not true.
    We have a bipartisan urgency to deal with this crisis and 
it is frustrating to me that in this hearing a lot of folks 
want to try to levy other issues that are not central to 
dealing with this scourge.
    I would like to just shift my questioning really quickly 
back to what I think are some of the real pressing issues at 
hand.
    Secretary Robinson, if I may, the challenges we have are 
connected, as we have talked about, to countries around the 
world and the need is clear to coordinate an effective 
strategy.
    I know that one forum where I hope that this is dealt with 
is the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs and I understand the 
commission is expected to meet just next month.
    I am wondering, number one, how active is the PRC, which is 
a source--major source--of this problem--how active has the PRC 
been on this commission and what do you hope to see come from 
it?
    Mr. Robinson. Thank you, Senator, for that question.
    In fact, the PRC is active. As I mentioned earlier, just 
last year we were able to schedule internationally three 
precursors--three precursor chemicals--and put them under 
international monitoring with the agreement of the PRC on this 
issue.
    The CND--the Commission on Narcotic Drugs--is active on 
this issue. The U.N. across the board is active on this issue. 
Dr. Gupta and I will be representing the United States at the 
CND in March precisely on this issue.
    Senator Booker. Because, again, I just want to reiterate 
for the record that folks seeking asylum or fleeing horrific 
violence--we know that the problem is really coming through 
ports of entry. Overwhelmingly, the fentanyl problem in the 
United States, that is the source, right?
    Mr. Robinson. That is correct.
    Senator Booker. The role that China is playing in that is 
something that should be at the center of our focus in dealing 
with this, correct?
    Mr. Robinson. Absolutely.
    Senator Booker. All right.
    Administrator Milgram, a recent Washington Post article 
highlighted the expansion of legalization of fentanyl test 
kits. While these kits were historically considered 
paraphernalia, Republican governors and lawmakers in Alabama, 
Ohio, Mississippi, Texas, and elsewhere have supported and 
legalized these kits that can help people see if the drugs are 
contaminated with fentanyl--the drugs they are taking.
    I just really want to know what your view is of these 
fentanyl test kits.
    Ms. Milgram. Senator, that--fentanyl test kits are run from 
HHS. They are the lead agency in addressing these issues.
    What I can tell you is we know that a number of things are 
being researched at HHS and the one thing that I have looked to 
see and just to make sure that I can understand is the use of 
something like a fentanyl test strip on a counterfeit fake pill 
and just how effective that can be to make sure that people 
understand, again, one of our core things is having public 
awareness and making sure people understand the threats that 
are out there.
    Senator Booker. That is your One Pill Can Kill campaign?
    Ms. Milgram. That is our One Pill Can Kill campaign, so I 
would really turn to the health experts at HHS that I know are 
looking at the test kits issue.
    Senator Booker. Maybe I can get you just to respond for the 
record. You said something I thought was really important that 
you are not even using the language overdose anymore. These are 
folks who think they are taking something else and then they 
take one pill and face this horrific health reaction that could 
result in death.
    You can understand at least these Republican leaders around 
our country saying, well, let us try to figure out ways with 
which we can prevent that from happening and that maybe this is 
one way that people who are actually looking to save lives, 
perhaps, this is one way to go about that?
    Ms. Milgram. Senator, I can tell you part of DEA is our 
regulatory division and so we think every day about are there 
ways that we can save American lives through that work and that 
is why we have been supportive, for example, of the MAT Act to 
expand treatment to all Americans who need it for medication 
and for opioid use disorder. Anything that DEA can do within 
our authorities we are looking at.
    Senator Booker. Just with the indulgence of the chair, one 
last point.
    Here we have this horrific problem that all of us have 
personal connection to--the people dying in our states. New 
Jersey, obviously, has seen this crisis.
    As we go about dealing with this I am wondering the 
normal--the past lessons we have learned from the so-called war 
on drugs and others, seeing an array of ways of approaching it, 
and maybe I can direct that to Dr. Gupta.
    We need to start looking at other ways to solve this crisis 
that may not have been in the playbook at all in our past 
efforts with the so-called war on drugs from decades past.
    Dr. Gupta. Exactly right, Senator Booker, and this is why 
the Biden drug control strategy for the first time in the 
history of the United States Government recognizes harm 
reduction as an important tool.
    That includes naloxone, includes testing strips for 
fentanyl, as well as student service programs, in addition to 
expanding treatment, recovery, and prevention, because to add 
those pieces is the second part of the same coin.
    We need to be looking at it as one coin where there is 
challenges with supply and aspects, but also demand reduction 
is very critical because we have got 9 million Americans that 
are suffering from opioid use disorder today in addition to 
those who are dying.
    Senator Booker. Just a simple--law enforcement is 
necessary, but not sufficient to solving this crisis in the 
United States of America, correct?
    Dr. Gupta. Absolutely correct.
    Senator Booker. Thank you, sir. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Booker.
    We are going to close this hearing. I called this hearing 
because this is a national urgent issue and there are foreign 
policy dimensions to it, and I called it in the spirit that 
both Democrats and Republicans need to join together in order 
to meet this challenge, collectively, as the United States of 
America.
    It is disheartening that even though the fentanyl overdose 
in terms of a skyrocketing spike began under the previous 
President's watch, President Trump, and continues to be a 
challenge today that there are those who want to characterize 
it in a certain way.
    When DEA seizes over 50 million fentanyl-laced fake 
prescription pills and more than 10,000 pounds of fentanyl 
powder in 2022, we know those are not individuals carrying 
that. That is why the ports of entry. That is why CBP says the 
points of entry, 85 percent all coming through tractor-trailers 
and vans.
    If we want to meet part of the challenge here, let us focus 
on where the challenge really is. It is at ports of entry and 
what we do at ports of entry to have sophisticated scanning 
equipment to stop it there as you fight the two cartels 
globally. That is how we are going to do that.
    Then also we have to challenge China and Mexico. I am not 
satisfied in either of the two contexts that we are doing what 
we need to do.
    Lastly, I am very well considering filing legislation that 
stops the sale of any form of prescription drug on social media 
because you do not know whether it is a real prescription drug 
or not and that maybe can very well help us realize less 
deaths.
    With the thanks of the committee for your collective 
testimony, this hearing will remain open until the close of 
business tomorrow.
    This hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 12:31 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
                              ----------                              


              Additional Material Submitted for the Record


              Responses of Mr. Todd Robinson to Questions 
                  Submitted by Senator James E. Risch

    Question. Are we properly leveraging the U.S. National Guard 
partnership programs, such as Colombia-South Carolina or Peru-West 
Virginia, and the U.S. National Guard's expertise in counter-drug 
operations, as we seek to train and equip partners in high drug 
trafficking regions?

    Answer. U.S. national security priorities and foreign policy goals 
provide the overarching framework for the U.S. National Guard's State 
Partnership Program (SPP), which broadly seeks to strengthen the 
institutional and operational capacity of our foreign military 
partners. In Colombia and Peru this includes the imperative to address 
drug trafficking and improve their institutional capacity across the 
board in related areas, including humanitarian assistance and disaster 
response, as well as other related challenges. The National Guard SPP 
in the Andes, including in Colombia and Peru, are organized on a 
military-to-military basis, with requests for support typically 
originating from embassy Office of Military Cooperation personnel or 
the Geographic Combatant Commander. I respectfully refer you to the 
Department of Defense for additional information.

    Question. I understand INL's rotary-wing fleet is critical to its 
counter-drug mission, especially in Central and South America, where we 
are training and advising local units. What is the state of INL's 
rotary-wing aviation assets?

    Answer. INL currently owns 99 rotary-wing aircraft, 50 of which are 
active--Colombia (26), Costa Rica (4), Peru (16), and Patrick Space 
Force Base (PSFB), FL (4). An additional 17 helicopters are in 
programmed depot maintenance or other extensive maintenance, and 32 are 
in storage pending deployment, induction into maintenance, or disposal.

    Question. Can you outline the current capacity, availability, and 
capability of these helicopters?

    Answer. INL has three different models of helicopters operating 
overseas--Huey-II (single engine), UH-1ST (twin engine), and UH-60 
(twin engine) supporting operations in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Peru, 
and training at PSFB. The availability/readiness of this fleet is 
reflected in the table below:

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]



    The representative capability/capacity of the various helicopter 
models is depicted in the table below. It should be noted that actual 
allowable passenger/cargo loads and range are dependent on weather and 
other factors.
    These rotary-wing aircraft have the capability to transport 
passengers and cargo, provide logistical support to eradication 
operations, support interdiction missions, conduct observation, and 
perform search and rescue and medical evacuation missions. They have 
proven to be critical to successful counternarcotics and law 
enforcement missions as well as humanitarian efforts after hurricanes, 
floods, and other emergencies. In some instances, they provide the only 
means available to reach remote and austere areas.

    Question. Do these helicopters meet your present and future needs 
as global threats and challenges evolve?

    Answer. UH-1 series helicopters (Huey-IIs and UH-1STs) are Vietnam 
era airframes and are increasingly difficult to maintain and sustain 
due to increasing scarcity of parts and their age and wear and tear, 
but INL and its partners are still conducting the mission successfully 
with them. They are also relatively underpowered for many of the 
missions we are undertaking. INL's current emphasis is to replace all 
single engine helicopters which are particularly vulnerable when 
operating over triple canopy jungle, water, or mountains and are not 
usable for maritime operations. INL currently provides support to 
Panama which operates six host government owned Huey-IIs and will 
replace those aircraft with UH-1STs in the coming months. INL recently 
acquired 28 used UH-60 Black Hawks from the U.S. Army, 12 of which will 
be utilized in Colombia, replacing the remaining 11 U.S. titled Huey-II 
helicopters there. INL also has a plan to begin replacing Huey-IIs in 
Peru with Black Hawks, subject to reaching a formal agreement with the 
Government of Peru, to assume an increased share of responsibility for 
supporting the effort to maintain their fleet.
    Moving forward INL intends to pursue additional fleet modernization 
by phasing out all remaining UH-1 series helicopters and replacing them 
with UH-60 or, in some cases, even more recent and technologically 
advanced helicopter models (for example, UH-72B Lakota helicopters). 
Specific airframe selection will be dependent on further mission 
analysis, to include the continuation of existing counternarcotics 
missions as well as new mission sets that may evolve as the Department 
works to counter synthetic opioids.
                                 ______
                                 

              Responses of Ms. Anne Milgram to Questions 
                     Submitted by Senator Tim Kaine

    Question. Data Collection: Within currently collected overdose 
death-related statistics, do DEA or other agencies track or 
disaggregate data by accidental deaths or drug poisoning? If not, does 
DEA have views on whether this data should be collected?

    Answer. DEA uses the term ``drug poisoning'' to refer to all drug-
related deaths because the illicit drug poisons the human body.

    Question. Public Awareness: You spoke about the ``One Pill Can 
Kill'' enforcement and public awareness campaign to increase the 
public's knowledge about the dangers of fentanyl, and about DEA making 
this campaign available nationally. Please elaborate on DEA's efforts 
to increase and encourage national adoption of this campaign. What can 
Congress do to increase adoption of this campaign by state and local 
authorities and other institutions?

    Answer. DEA strongly encourages Members of Congress and their staff 
to continue to help us amplify our ``One Pill Can Kill'' campaign and 
increase awareness around fentanyl, methamphetamine, and fake pills. To 
effectively combat the fentanyl epidemic, it is critical that when 
Members of Congress return to their communities, they inform their 
constituents, friends, and families on the dangers of fentanyl and that 
``One Pill Can Kill.'' In addition, DEA has publicly available 
materials on its website that can be used by media, parents, teachers, 
educators, and community organizations to raise awareness of the 
dangers of fentanyl and fake pills.
                                 ______
                                 

              Responses of Ms. Anne Milgram to Questions 
                   Submitted by Senator Bill Hagerty

    Question. On the Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) 
cooperation with Mexican authorities: How is DEA's working relationship 
with Mexico?

    Answer. The United States continues to work with Mexico to take 
concrete actions on both sides of the border to address the fentanyl 
crisis affecting both of our countries. An example is the January 2023 
arrest of Ovidio Guzman Lopez. We honor the Mexican servicemembers who 
lost their lives in this capture operation. Another example is the 
capture operation last year of Rafael Caro Quintero. We all still need 
to do more and we stand ready to work together with Mexico.

    Question. What metrics does DEA use to assess the success of 
counter-narcotics cooperation with Mexico?

    Answer. DEA is laser focused on defeating two of the two cartels 
based in Mexico--the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco Cartel--which are 
responsible for the influx of fentanyl into the United States that is 
killing Americans today. To defeat these cartels, DEA is open to all 
forms of cooperation with the Government of Mexico, including the 
sharing of information on drug or chemical seizures and trafficker 
arrests, the shutting down of clandestine labs in Mexico, and the 
arrest and extradition of cartel members.

    Question. How does the current level of cooperation with Mexico 
compare to the period preceding President Lopez Obrador's election?

    Answer. The United States continues to work with Mexico to take 
concrete actions on both sides of the border to address the fentanyl 
crisis affecting both of our countries. An example is the January 2023 
arrest of Ovidio Guzman Lopez. We honor the Mexican servicemembers who 
lost their lives in this capture operation. Another example is the 
capture operation last year of Rafael Caro Quintero. We all still need 
to do more and we stand ready to work together with Mexico.

    Question. Has cooperation improved since Mexico hosted the first 
High-Level Security Dialogue in October 2021?

    Answer. Yes. The High-Level Security Dialogue (HLSD) has allowed 
more communications to flow between the countries giving both 
governments the space and time to voice their priorities and their 
concerns. Although our work with Mexico extends far beyond the HLSD, 
the framework gives us another opportunity to raise issues of mutual 
concern with the Government of Mexico.

    Question. Which Mexican authorities are the most effective in 
combating the Mexican drug cartels?

    Answer. The Mexican Navy (SEMAR) and the Mexican Army (SEDENA) have 
been effective in combatting the Mexico-based Sinaloa Cartel and the 
Jalisco Cartel.
    For example, in July 2022, SEMAR arrested Rafael Caro Quintero, a 
high-ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel, and responsible for the 
brutal torture and murder of DEA Special Agent Enrique Camarena.
    In addition, SEDENA arrested Ovidio Guzman-Lopez, one of the 
leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel and son of Joaquin Guzman-Loera, also 
known as ``El Chapo,'' Juan Gerardo Trevino-Chavez, the head of Cartel 
de Noreste (CDN), and recently arrested Jose Guadalupe Tapia Quintero 
and Erick Valencia Salazar, high ranking members of the Jalisco Cartel.

    Question. What Mexican authorities are the most trustworthy 
partners for counter-narcotics cooperation?

    Answer. DEA has developed numerous trustworthy relationships with 
state and local level partners in Mexico.

    Question. What is DEA's relationship with the newly established 
Mexican National Guard?

    Answer. DEA has only had limited interactions with the Mexican 
National Guard.

    Question. To what extent does DEA work with Mexican authorities to 
interdict fentanyl precursors?

    Answer. DEA understands the importance of developing bi-lateral 
relationships to successfully combat narcotics trafficking, and seeks 
to work with Mexican Government authorities on all levels. These 
efforts are not limited to law enforcement, but include Mexican 
regulatory agencies and financial institutions, such as the Financial 
Intelligence Unit, that is responsible for freezing bank accounts of 
companies associated with the trafficking of pre-cursor chemicals.

    Question. What are the biggest hurdles to deepening cooperation 
with Mexican authorities?

    Answer. Both the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco Cartel have extensive 
networks across Mexico and across the world. We all must do more to 
apprehend and prosecute members of these criminal networks, disrupt the 
supply of precursor chemicals used to make illicit fentanyl, and 
prevent the trafficking of fentanyl into the United States.

    Question. On China's role in money laundering for the Mexican drug 
cartels: DEA's Project Sleeping Giant investigation has unearthed 
Chinese money launderer's key role in funding Mexican drug cartels. 
These Mexico-based Chinese money launderers have come to dominate 
international money laundering markets and some have ties to senior 
China Communist Party (CCP) officials.\1\ \2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ https://www.propublica.org/article/china-cartels-xizhi-li-
money-laundering
    \2\ https://www.reuters.com/article/mexico-china-cartels-
idLTAL8N2I34RV
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    What is DEA's estimate on the amount of money laundered annually by 
Mexico-based Chinese brokers?

    Answer. Approximately $1 billion USD annually and growing.

    Question. How many of these Chinese money launderers have ties to 
CCP officials?

    Answer. DEA cannot comment at this time.

    Question. Do you assess that the CCP is actively directing these 
money launderers to move money for Mexican drug cartels? If not, what 
is the CCP's role?

    Answer. DEA cannot comment at this time.
                                 ______
                                 

              Responses of Mr. Todd Robinson to Questions 
                   Submitted by Senator Bill Hagerty

    Question. In response to my question on whether there any internal 
disagreement or debate between the Bureau of International Narcotics 
and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) and the Bureau of East Asian and 
Pacific Affairs (EAP) on omitting any mention of China in Secretary 
Blinken's press statement titled ``U.S. to Sanction Three Fentanyl 
Traffickers Contributing to the U.S. Opioid Crisis'' (January 30, 2023, 
hereinafter ``Secretary's press statement''), you initially said, 
``No.'' But then you clarified: ``There was debate. There was 
discussion. But at the end of the day, we agreed on the [Secretary's] 
statement.'' In contrast, the Treasury Department's parallel press 
statement titled ``Treasury Sanctions Three Fentanyl Traffickers 
Contributing to the U.S. Opioid Crisis (January 30, 2023) explicitly 
named sanctioned Chinese entities (``OFAC-designated Chinese chemical 
transportation company Shanghai Fast-Fine Chemicals'') and prominently 
cited the Mexican drug traffickers' importation of ``precursor 
chemicals from China into Mexico, which are then used to manufacture 
synthetic drugs, including fentanyl.'' Did INL, including any employees 
within the bureau, support at any point the inclusion of China or OFAC-
designated Chinese entities in the Secretary's press statement?

    Answer. The Department drafted a proposed public statement from 
Secretary Blinken to amplify the Department of Treasury's sanctions 
actions and statement. The proposed statement was reviewed and cleared 
through standard Department of State processes. Treasury's action was 
against Mexican and Guatemalan nationals involved in the manufacturing 
and smuggling of fentanyl. The Department's focus was on the 
individuals and their criminal actions, including during the internal 
process I reference above.

    Question. Did INL, including any employees within the bureau, 
receive at any point any information or explanation from EAP on why 
China or OFAC-designated Chinese entities should not be included in the 
Secretary's press statement?

    Answer. INL received edits from throughout the Department during 
the drafting and clearance process, including from EAP.

    Question. What were INL's and EAP's arguments for and against 
mentioning China in the Secretary's press statement?

    Answer. INL carefully weighed edits from throughout the building 
related to the proposed statement with the explicit goal of amplifying 
the action Treasury was taking against two Mexican and one Guatemalan 
nationals.

    Question. Was Secretary Blinken aware of this internal debate or 
discussion prior to the release of the Secretary's press statement?

    Answer. To the best of our knowledge, Secretary Blinken was not 
personally aware of any discussions of or edits to this statement that 
took place during the review and clearance process referenced above.

    Question. Was Deputy Secretary Sherman aware of this internal 
debate or discussion?

    Answer. To the best of our knowledge, Deputy Secretary Sherman was 
not personally aware of any discussions or edits to this statement that 
took place during the review and clearance process referenced above.

    Question. Was the decision to omit mention of China in the 
Secretary's press statement intended to avoid antagonizing the Chinese 
Communist Party or the People's Republic of China (PRC) Government 
ahead of Secretary Blinken's planned trip to China? Please begin your 
answer with a yes or no.

    Answer. No such ``decision'' occurred as framed in your question. 
The Department's intention was to highlight Treasury's actions on this 
important crisis and the three actors who are now sanctioned as a 
result of their criminal actions.

                Smuggling Migrants at the Border Now a 
                        Billion-Dollar Business

                                      Submitted by Senator Ted Cruz

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]



                 Terrorists Could be Among 1.2 Million 
                    Million U.S. Border ``Gotaways''

                                      Submitted by Senator Ted Cruz

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]



              U.S. To Sanction Three Fentanyl Traffickers 
                 Contributing to the U.S. Opioid Crisis

                                  Submitted by Senator Bill Hagerty

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]



Treasury Sanctions Three Fentanyl Traffickers Contributing to the U.S. 
                             Opioid Crisis

                                  Submitted by Senator Bill Hagerty

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]



         Full Transcript of Biden's State of the Union Address

                                  Submitted by Senator Bill Hagerty

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FACT SHEET: In State of the Union, President Biden to Outline Vision To 
             Advance Progress on Unity Agenda in Year Ahead

                                  Submitted by Senator Bill Hagerty

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                                  [all]