Ending the fentanyl crisis won’t be easy. The U.S. has an addiction problem that spans decades – long predating the rise of fentanyl – and countless attempts to regulate, legislate and incarcerate have done little to reduce drug consumption. Credit: Shutterstock

By External Source
Feb 5 2025 (IPS)

Americans consume more illicit drugs per capita than anyone else in the world; about 6% of the U.S. population uses them regularly.
One such drug, fentanyl – a synthetic opioid that’s 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine – is the leading reason U.S. overdose deaths have surged in recent years. While the rate of fentanyl overdose deaths has dipped a bit recently, it’s still vastly higher than it was just five years ago.

Ending the fentanyl crisis won’t be easy. The U.S. has an addiction problem that spans decades – long predating the rise of fentanyl – and countless attempts to regulate, legislate and incarcerate have done little to reduce drug consumption. Meanwhile, the opioid crisis alone costs Americans tens of billions of dollars each year.

With past policies having failed to curb fentanyl deaths, President Donald Trump is turning to another tool to fight America’s drug problem: trade policy.

During his presidential campaign, Trump pledged to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico if they didn’t halt the flow of drugs across U.S. borders, and on China if it didn’t do more to crack down on the production of chemicals used to make fentanyl. Trump reiterated his plan on his first day back in office, and on Feb. 1, he made good on that threat, imposing tariffs on all three counties and citing fentanyl as a key reason.

Speaking as a professor who studies social policy, I think both fentanyl and the proposed import taxes represent significant threats to the U.S. While the human toll of fentanyl is undeniable, the real question is whether tariffs will work – or worsen what’s already a crisis.

Fentanyl: The ‘single greatest challenge’

In 2021, more than 107,000 Americans died from overdoses – the most ever recorded – and nearly seven out of 10 deaths involved fentanyl or similar synthetic opioids. In 2022, fentanyl was killing an average of 200 people each day. And while fentanyl deaths declined slightly in 2023, nearly 75,000 Americans still died from synthetic opioids that year. In March of that year – the most recent for which full-year data on overdose deaths is available – the then-secretary of homeland security declared fentanyl to be “the single greatest challenge we face as a country.”

But history shows that government efforts to curb drug use often have little success.

The first real attempt to regulate drugs in the U.S. occurred in 1890, when, amid rampant drug abuse, Congress enacted a law taxing morphine and opium. In the years that followed, cocaine use skyrocketed, rising 700% between 1890 and 1902. Cocaine was so popular, it was even found in drinks such as Coca-Cola, from which it got its name.

This was followed by a 1909 act banning the smoking of opium, and, in 1937, the “Marihuana Tax Act.” The most comprehensive package of laws was instituted with the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which classified drugs into five categories based on their medical uses and potential for abuse or dependence. A year later, then-President Richard Nixon launched the “War on Drugs” and declared drug abuse as “public enemy No. 1.” And in 1986, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, directing US$1.7 billion for drug enforcement and control.

These policies have generally failed to curb drug supply and use, while also causing significant harm to people and communities of color. For example, between 1980 and 1997, the number of incarcerations for nonviolent drug offenses went from 50,000 to 400,000. But these policies hardly put a dent in consumption. The share of high school seniors using drugs dipped only slightly over the same period, from 65% in 1980 to 58% in 1997.

In short, past U.S. efforts to reduce illegal drug use haven’t been especially effective. Now, it looks like the U.S. is shifting toward using tariffs – but research suggests that those will not lead to better outcomes either, and could actually cause considerable harm.

Why tariffs won’t work

America’s experiments with tariffs can be traced back to the founding era with the passage of the Tariff Act of 1789. This long history has shown that tariffs, industrial subsidies and protectionist policies don’t do much to stimulate broad economic growth at home – but they raise prices for consumers and can even lead to global economic instability. History also shows that tariffs don’t work especially well as negotiating tools, failing to effect significant policy changes in target countries. Economists generally agree that the costs of tariffs outweigh the benefits.

Over the course of Trump’s first term, the average effective tariff rate on Chinese imports went from 3% to 11%. But while imports from China fell slightly, the overall trade relationship didn’t change much: China remains the second-largest supplier of goods to the U.S.

The tariffs did have some benefit – for Vietnam and other nearby countries with relatively low labor costs. Essentially, the tariffs on China caused production to shift, with global companies investing billions of dollars in competitor nations.

This isn’t the first time Trump has used trade policy to pressure China on fentanyl – he did so in his first term. But while China made some policy changes in response, such as adding fentanyl to its controlled substances list in 2019, fentanyl deaths in the U.S. continued to rise. Currently, China still ranks as the No. 1 producer of fentanyl precursors, or chemicals used to produce illicit fentanyl. And there are others in the business: India, over that same period, has become a major producer of fentanyl.

A question of supply and demand

Drugs have been pervasive throughout U.S. history. And when you investigate this history and look at how other nations are dealing with this problem rather than criminalization, the Swiss and French have approached it as an addiction problem that could be treated. They realized that demand is what fuels the illicit market. And as any economist will tell you, supply will find a way if you don’t limit the demand. That’s why treatment works and bans don’t.

The U.S. government’s ability to control the production of these drugs is limited at best. The problem is that new chemical products will continually be produced. Essentially, failure to restrict demand only places bandages on hemorrhaging wounds. What the U.S. needs is a more systematic approach to deal with the demand that’s fueling the drug crisis.

This article was updated to include details of the tariffs once they were imposed.

Rodney Coates, Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Miami University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A worker, farmer and doctor are hanged in the “Suicide Zone” outside of Taiwan’s national legislature, in a street theater protest by student groups against government efforts to establish “Free Economy Pilot Zones” across Taiwan. Credit: Dennis Engbarth/IPS

By Dennis Engbarth
TAIPEI, Sep 11 2014 (IPS)

The Taiwan government’s plan to liberalise tariff-free imports of agricultural produce from China and other countries for processing in free economic pilot zones, which will then be exported as ‘Made in Taiwan’ items, may mean suicide for Taiwanese farmers if approved by the national legislature.

The Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) government of President Ma Ying-jeou conceived the Free Economic Pilot Zone (FEPZ) plan in 2012 as a way to urge Taiwanese investors in China to relocate value added operations back to Taiwan, through tax and other incentives.

In early 2013, the KMT government re-packaged the plan to feature components for the promotion of value-added agriculture and international medical services, among others, and submitted required changes in the legal code to implement the plan in a draft Free Economic Pilot Zone Special Act to the KMT-controlled Legislature in December 2013.

“The intention of the Ma government to lift the ban on Chinese agricultural commodities through the FEPZ special act violates his own promise in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, but dovetails with Beijing’s objective of cross-strait economic integration." -- Lai Chung-chiang, convenor of the Democratic Front Against Cross-Strait Trade in Services Agreement
The special act offers investors in FEPZs business tax exemptions, tariff-free importation of industrial or agricultural raw materials, eased entry and income tax breaks for foreign professional workers, including from China, and streamlined procedures for customs and quarantine checks, labour safety inspections and environmental impact assessments.

Social movement groups have warned that the China-friendly KMT government aims to use the FEPZ programme as a back door to realise full deregulation of trade between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China, and avoid the need for legislative ratification of trade pacts after the Sunflower citizen and student occupation movement in March derailed a controversial service trade pact between the two governments.

Lai Chung-chiang, convenor of the Democratic Front Against Cross-Strait Trade in Services Agreement, observed that the Sunflower movement spurred the formation of a consensus in Taiwan that the Legislature should enact a law strictly governing the negotiation of cross-strait agreements before reviewing the ‘trade in services’ agreement or other pacts with China.

Fearing indefinite delays in future China trade deals, the Ma government tried to ram a first reading of the draft FEPZ special act through the national legislature’s economic affairs committee in two extraordinary sessions in July and August, but opposition lawmakers blocked this push.

Lai told IPS that the core of the FEPZ concept is to arbitrarily grant tariff-free entry for raw materials and products from all countries into Taiwan’s six main seaports and its major international airport in order to display Taiwan’s interest to enter the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other regional free trade pacts.

Instead, this act will sell out Taiwan’s economic future, warned Lai, adding, “Our major trade partners will have no reason to engage in negotiations with us to further open their markets as our government will have surrendered all of our bargaining chips even before talks begin.”

“The intention of the Ma government to lift the ban on Chinese agricultural commodities through the FEPZ special act violates his own promise in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, but dovetails with Beijing’s objective of cross-strait economic integration,” Lai added.

Despite a high-powered advertising campaign, the Taiwan public is not visibly enthusiastic about the FEPZ plan. Nearly 63 percent of respondents in a poll carried out by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)’s Public Survey Center in June said they were worried about the scheme’s impact on Taiwan’s economy.

Labour organisations are leery of further liberalisation of foreign workers, including white-collar professionals from China, while medical and educational organisations object to plans to offer health and educational tourism programmes that would spur the commodification of public services.

Raw deal for local farmers

Chen Chi-chung, a professor at the National Chung Hsing University Agricultural Policy Center, stated, “Taiwan may become the first producer of agricultural goods that will permit agricultural produce from all over the world, including China, to be used for processing in its own factories free of tariffs or business taxes.”

Article 42 of the draft special act would fully lift the current ban on import from China of 2,186 types of raw materials, including 830 types of agricultural commodities, while Article 38 would exempt FEPZ enterprises from tariffs, cargo levies and business income taxes. Article 41 would exempt most such commodities from customs or health inspections.

Moreover, makers of processed agricultural goods or foods exported from FEPZs will be able to attach ‘Made in Taiwan’ labels to their products.

Rural Life Experimental Farm Director Liao Chih-heng told IPS that instead of helping farmers cope with the unfair competition from producers in China due to state subsidies and lower labour and environmental costs, the Ma government is inviting such unfair competition into our home market.

Tai Chen-yao, a farmer of squash and lemons in Kaohsiung City in southern Taiwan, told IPS, “If Taiwan sells processed Chinese agricultural goods as Made in Taiwan, food processors as well as farmers will be hurt since there will be no way to guarantee the safety or quality of raw material and thus the food safety for consumers of such products.”

Su Chih-fen, Yunlin County Mayor for the opposition DPP, echoed these sentiments, telling IPS that a rising share of Taiwan farmers, including youth who are returning to the countryside, are absorbing new knowledge and creating innovative agricultural products that can out-compete imports, which may be cheaper but have higher food safety risks.

The value-added agriculture plan would deprive this emerging cohort of new style farmers of access to export markets and divert resources away from assisting the majority of farmers to upgrade, said Su, who is mayor of Taiwan’s agricultural capital.

Agriculture accounted for 1.7 percent of Taiwan’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2013. Primary sector workers in agriculture, forestry, fishing and livestock accounted for nearly five percent of Taiwan’s 10.97-million-strong workforce or 544,000 persons as of May 2014.

Su further warned that the government’s plan would effectively punish farmers who kept their roots in Taiwan and have worked to upgrade and grow high quality produce.

In the wake of such widespread criticism, the official National Development Commission (NDC) has announced modifications including dropping the provision that 10 percent of agriculture value-added goods made with raw materials from China could be sold on the domestic market.

However, Chen Chi-chung declared that the changes, along with the NDC’s claim that processed foods made in the FEPZ using imported materials from China or other low-cost suppliers would not enter or affect Taiwan’s domestic market, were deceptive semantics.

Using imported raw agriculture materials, such as tea or peanuts, to make processed food products in Taiwan will surely reduce the demand for domestic agricultural products and thus the income of Taiwan farmers, said Chen.

According to the Council of Agriculture’s statistics, average annual income for a farm household in 2012 was about 33,200 dollars; however, the net income from farming activities was only 7,200 dollars.

KMT Legislative Caucus Convenor Fei Hung-tai told IPS that the majority KMT caucus aims to actively promote passage of the FEPZ statute during the upcoming session.

Noting that civil society organisations and opposition parties have called for the elimination of Articles 38, 41, 42 and other provisions harmful to the interests of Taiwan farmers, workers and public services, Lai told IPS, “If the KMT pushes passage of this act, it will have to either have to accept major concessions in the final content of the bill or face an intense backlash in civil society and public opinion.”

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida