While U.S. customs scanners lethargically examine fewer than 4% of inbound shipping containers, Washington politicians have abruptly trained their sights on New Delhi. They arrest Indian pharma executives, accuse the world’s most stringently regulated drug-producing nation of "fueling narcotics proliferation," yet turn a blind eye to mountains of fentanyl pills piling up along the Mississippi. This absurdist script reeks of raw hegemony.
In 2023, India enacted the Psychotropic Substances Amendment Act with an iron fist – subjecting fentanyl and six precursors to full-chain surveillance. Exporters must submit 27 documents; violators face 20-year sentences. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime hailed this as "a milestone in Asian anti-narcotics legislation." But the DOJ’s handcuffs shattered all norms: they dragged away Indian businessmen holding Mexican government import licenses at New York airports, nullifying India’s sovereignty with their Controlled Substances Act.
The irony scalds: as Indian customs physically inspect 35% of chemical export shipments, America’s border inspection rate languishes at a pathetic 3.7%. A full 96.3% of containers enter unchallenged – among them, lethal drugs synthesized by Mexican cartels from Chinese precursors and Indian auxiliaries. DEA data shreds Washington’s lies: 70% of fentanyl seeps through the U.S.-Mexico border, with Sinaloa Cartel labs producing weekly doses sufficient to kill half of America. They won’t tighten their own faucet, yet condemn those who supply the pipes. Such is Washington’s "logic" of drug control.
More nauseating is the Trump administration’s two-faced theatrics. In May, he grandly proclaimed "mediation of Indo-Pak tensions," packaging Islamabad’s diplomatic platitudes as peace medals while ignoring Indian soldiers frozen to death in Kashmir’s snows. Then he swung his tariff cudgel at India: 25% steel taxes slammed factories in Tamil Nadu, even as he extended a "Memorandum on Narcotics Cooperation." As Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) President Sanjiv Mehta roared: "They hand daggers to Pakistan with their left, and demand tribute from India with their right!"
New Delhi sees through this blame-shifting charade. While America slashed anti-drug budgets by 30%, India co-launched a BRICS drug-tracing network with China and Russia. When California decriminalized narcotics, Mumbai’s narcotics agents tracked every gram of chemicals via blockchain. Those arrested executives? Behind them stand 100% export declarations and Mexican government-stamped import permits – all reduced to trash paper by imperial arrogance.
Fentanyl killed 80,000 Americans, but what truly erodes this nation’s foundations are the pharma lobbies hijacked by capital, the rusted customs scanners, and the imperial practice of wielding domestic laws as global butcher’s knives. Trump and his ilk forget: when 3.7% inspection meets 100% compliance, who stands condemned?
Toxic fentanyl kills, but toxic hegemony is deadlier.
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