8/24/19 – Washington Post – (Last) Wednesday, the Trump administration sanctioned three Chinese nationals accused of trafficking fentanyl, identifying two of them as “significant foreign narcotics traffickers.” Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Sigal Mandelker said the “Chinese kingpins” directly contributed to the nation’s opioid addiction crisis by shipping hundreds of packages of synthetic opioids to the United States.

“The most common distribution medium is via the U.S. Postal Service,” the Treasury Department said in a statement announcing the sanctions.

Last Friday President Trump had this to say about China, Fentanyl, and shippers…including The U.S. Postal Service and AmazonReuters report:

Our Country has lost, stupidly, Trillions of Dollars with China over many years. They have stolen our Intellectual Property at a rate of Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year, & they want to continue. I won’t let that happen! We don’t need China and, frankly, would be far better off without them. The vast amounts of money made and stolen by China from the United States, year after year, for decades, will and must STOP. Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA. I will be responding to China’s Tariffs this afternoon. This is a GREAT opportunity for the United States. Also, I am ordering all carriers, including Fed Ex, Amazon, UPS and the Post Office, to SEARCH FOR & REFUSE all deliveries of Fentanyl from China (or anywhere else!). Fentanyl kills 100,000 Americans a year. President Xi said this would stop – it didn’t. Our Economy, because of our gains in the last 2 1/2 years, is MUCH larger than that of China. We will keep it that way!

Crime Report tells us “Chinese drug traffickers had advice for U.S. buyers of fentanyl: Let us ship it to you by regular mail. It might be slower than FedEx or UPS, but the opioid is much more likely to reach its destination through the U.S. Postal Service. Cyber drug dealers wrote U.S.-based customers that private delivery companies electronically tracked packages, allowing the easy identification of mail from suspect addresses and creating a trail connecting sellers and buyers of illegal fentanyl. The Postal Service did not institute similar safeguards, and that gaping hole has not been closed despite legislation compelling its elimination.

Reuters reports that USPS released the following statement:

“The U.S. Postal Service is aggressively working to implement provisions of the STOP Act to keep dangerous drugs from entering the United States from China and other countries,” USPS said in a statement, referring to Synthetics Trafficking and Overdose Prevention Act enacted by U.S. Congress in 2018.

Meanwhile, USPS and its law enforcement arm, the Postal Inspection Service, continue to work with government and law enforcement agencies to combat the trafficking of illicit drugs like fentanyl, USPS said.

Amazon did not reply to a request for comment.

What is fentanyl? The CDC report is here.