China is the manufacturing heart of the world, everything you would need to make nearly anything you wanted, has to pass through, be processed in, or be manufactured by China. So how exactly do those "raw materials" find their way into the USA? The answer might come as a surprise to you: Fentanyl is smuggled into America for Americans, by other Americans. (CATO Institute, 2022; NY Times, 2024).

Not only are the majority of the traffickers American, but also "over 90 percent of fentanyl border seizures occur at legal border crossings and interior vehicle checkpoints".

When it comes to sourcing the materials necessary to make Fentanyl, you can thank organizations like the Express Association of America, a lobbying group for FedEx, UPS, and DHL for making it that much easier by lobbing to have the de minimis rule's value increased.

This change to trade policy has upended the logistics of international drug trafficking. In the past few years, the United States has become a major transshipment point for Chinese-made chemicals used by Mexico’s cartels to manufacture the fentanyl that’s devastating U.S. communities, anti-narcotics agents say. Traffickers have pulled it off by riding a surge in e-commerce that’s flooding the U.S. with packages, helped by that trade provision.
-- Reuters, 2024

The de minimis limit was raised in 2016, which is what created the conditions that made transporting these chemical compounds through the US so ideal. There is a clear profit motive in raising that minimum. "The rollback [of de minimis] would snarl supply chains and raise consumer prices" (Reuters, 2024). According to John Pickel, a former U.S. Customs official and now senior director of international supply chain policy at the National Foreign Trade Council, the de minimis rules do not enable smuggling, stating "traffickers would continue to sneak boxes into the U.S." even without the rule. Though, even Reuters admits that the rout being taken now by smugglers is a "streamlined system", and that this system is so dense that "just a tiny fraction of the nearly 4million de minimis parcels arriving [...] daily are inspected by U.S. Customs." This motivation is echoed by the head of the Express Association of America, a lobbying group for FedEx, UPS and DHL, stating they "want to keep the [de minimis] channel open for as many goods as possible because streamlined entry saves them money."

You can see the impact of this desirable, streamlined port of entry by looking at the stark rise of synthetic opioid overdoses (other than methadone) in the US:

This rise aligns with the 2016 rule change, which seems to indicate that a cheaper more streamlined port of entry doesn't just benefit shippers, it also benefits the manufactures of Fentanyl.

This, however, is naturally just a byproduct of a more profound problem. What drives a maintenance worker from Tucson to "[ferry] about 7,000 kilos of fentanyl-making chemicals to an operative of the Sinaloa Cartel", a quantity of chemicals "sufficient to produce 5.3 billion pills"? (Reuters, 2024)

The New York Times seems to have picked up the scent,

A college football star was lured in by a friend after dropping out of school. A mother raising three special-needs children took the job while facing eviction. A homeless man was recruited from an encampment in a Walmart parking lot. [...]

“The cartels are directly recruiting anyone who is willing to do it, which typically is someone who needs the money,” said Tara McGrath, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California. “The cartels spread their tentacles and grab ahold of vulnerable people at every possible opportunity.” [...]

One woman met her recruiter while in rehab in Los Angeles, where the two struck up a friendship [...] The woman, who asked to be identified by her first initial, M., said that her friend started pressuring her to smuggle drugs only after they spent years getting to know each other. When M. resisted, her friend flew into a rage. [...]

The job offer reached Gustavo in San Diego after he drank too much beer at a party and confessed to a friend that he badly needed money. At the time, he was the main provider for his mother in their San Diego apartment. His brother had moved out, and his parents were divorced. Gustavo was working at a grocery store, but struggled to pay the bills. “I want to be a boss,” he told his friend that night. “This job isn’t feeding me and my mom.”
-- NY Times, 2024

Yet, the New York Times has nothing to say about the conditions that drive these people to risk their lives. Each of them sentenced to jail time. M was sentenced to 18 months in prison, Gustavo spent 32 months in a federal prison. The question always seems to be "Who is providing the fentanyl?", "How do we stop the fentanyl from getting into the country?", and never, "how do we ensure citizens are not self-medicating with things like fentanyl?"

The profile of those entangled in this scheme to traffic materials and fentanyl across the boarder seems to be of the desperate and vulnerable type. Those with economic hardships, or battling their own addictions. This whole conversation about China's role in all this is moot when you get to the heart of what drives people to substances and to quick cash. It is a cyclical demand, where the poorest among us traffic the materials needed to make the narcotics that the rest of the poorest among us used to cope with their material conditions. Statistics from Addiction Group show how bleak this reality is:

• Individuals living below the federal poverty line have about 36% higher odds of developing substance abuse issues than those in the highest income brackets.
• Drug overdose deaths among adults with no college education grew from about 12 per 100,000 in 2000 to 82 per 100,000 in 2021, far outpacing increases among more educated groups.
• 85% of the U.S. prison population either has an active substance use disorder or was incarcerated for crimes involving drugs or drug use.
• Lower-Income Prevalence: National data consistently show that people in households making under $20,000 per year have significantly higher rates of illicit drug use and alcohol misuse than those earning $75,000 or above.
• Poverty Overlaps: High-poverty neighborhoods often see compounded risk factors: poor access to healthcare, elevated stress levels, and limited supportive services.
• Cycle of Financial Strain: Addiction perpetuates financial instability, as funds meant for basic needs may go toward substances, leading to deeper poverty and, in some cases, homelessness.

If China stopped being the most cost-efficient supplier of the materials needed to produce Fentanyl tomorrow, the whole trade would simply find the next most cost-efficient supplier. In a time when car loan defaults are at an all-time high, where 1 in 3 Americans say they rely on credit cards to make ends meet, 60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, and an estimated 29 million American adults lack the ability to pay for needed medical care, it is no wonder where the Fentanyl Crisis really comes from. It is a crisis of despair, with millions of Americans coping at both ends, creating an interdependency feed back loop, like a snake eating its own tail.

China is the manufacturing heart of the world, everything you would need to make nearly anything you wanted, has to pass through, be processed in, or be manufactured by China. So how exactly do those "raw materials" find their way into the USA? The answer might come as a surprise to you: Fentanyl is smuggled into America for Americans, by other Americans. (CATO Institute, 2022; NY Times, 2024).

Not only are the majority of the traffickers American, but also "over 90 percent of fentanyl border seizures occur at legal border crossings and interior vehicle checkpoints".

When it comes to sourcing the materials necessary to make Fentanyl, you can thank organizations like the Express Association of America, a lobbying group for FedEx, UPS, and DHL for making it that much easier by lobbing to have the de minimis rule's value increased.

This change to trade policy has upended the logistics of international drug trafficking. In the past few years, the United States has become a major transshipment point for Chinese-made chemicals used by Mexico’s cartels to manufacture the fentanyl that’s devastating U.S. communities, anti-narcotics agents say. Traffickers have pulled it off by riding a surge in e-commerce that’s flooding the U.S. with packages, helped by that trade provision.
-- Reuters, 2024

The de minimis limit was raised in 2016, which is what created the conditions that made transporting these chemical compounds through the US so ideal. There is a clear profit motive in raising that minimum. "The rollback [of de minimis] would snarl supply chains and raise consumer prices" (Reuters, 2024). According to John Pickel, a former U.S. Customs official and now senior director of international supply chain policy at the National Foreign Trade Council, the de minimis rules do not enable smuggling, stating "traffickers would continue to sneak boxes into the U.S." even without the rule. Though, even Reuters admits that the rout being taken now by smugglers is a "streamlined system", and that this system is so dense that "just a tiny fraction of the nearly 4million de minimis parcels arriving [...] daily are inspected by U.S. Customs." This motivation is echoed by the head of the Express Association of America, a lobbying group for FedEx, UPS and DHL, stating they "want to keep the [de minimis] channel open for as many goods as possible because streamlined entry saves them money."

You can see the impact of this desirable, streamlined port of entry by looking at the stark rise of synthetic opioid overdoses (other than methadone) in the US:

This rise aligns with the 2016 rule change, which seems to indicate that a cheaper more streamlined port of entry doesn't just benefit shippers, it also benefits the manufactures of Fentanyl.

This, however, is naturally just a byproduct of a more profound problem. What drives a maintenance worker from Tucson to "[ferry] about 7,000 kilos of fentanyl-making chemicals to an operative of the Sinaloa Cartel", a quantity of chemicals "sufficient to produce 5.3 billion pills"? (Reuters, 2024)

The New York Times seems to have picked up the scent,

A college football star was lured in by a friend after dropping out of school. A mother raising three special-needs children took the job while facing eviction. A homeless man was recruited from an encampment in a Walmart parking lot. [...]

“The cartels are directly recruiting anyone who is willing to do it, which typically is someone who needs the money,” said Tara McGrath, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California. “The cartels spread their tentacles and grab ahold of vulnerable people at every possible opportunity.” [...]

One woman met her recruiter while in rehab in Los Angeles, where the two struck up a friendship [...] The woman, who asked to be identified by her first initial, M., said that her friend started pressuring her to smuggle drugs only after they spent years getting to know each other. When M. resisted, her friend flew into a rage. [...]

The job offer reached Gustavo in San Diego after he drank too much beer at a party and confessed to a friend that he badly needed money. At the time, he was the main provider for his mother in their San Diego apartment. His brother had moved out, and his parents were divorced. Gustavo was working at a grocery store, but struggled to pay the bills. “I want to be a boss,” he told his friend that night. “This job isn’t feeding me and my mom.”
-- NY Times, 2024

Yet, the New York Times has nothing to say about the conditions that drive these people to risk their lives. Each of them sentenced to jail time. M was sentenced to 18 months in prison, Gustavo spent 32 months in a federal prison. The question always seems to be "Who is providing the fentanyl?", "How do we stop the fentanyl from getting into the country?", and never, "how do we ensure citizens are not self-medicating with things like fentanyl?"

The profile of those entangled in this scheme to traffic materials and fentanyl across the boarder seems to be of the desperate and vulnerable type. Those with economic hardships, or battling their own addictions. This whole conversation about China's role in all this is moot when you get to the heart of what drives people to substances and to quick cash. It is a cyclical demand, where the poorest among us traffic the materials needed to make the narcotics that the rest of the poorest among us used to cope with their material conditions. Statistics from Addiction Group show how bleak this reality is:

• Individuals living below the federal poverty line have about 36% higher odds of developing substance abuse issues than those in the highest income brackets.
• Drug overdose deaths among adults with no college education grew from about 12 per 100,000 in 2000 to 82 per 100,000 in 2021, far outpacing increases among more educated groups.
• 85% of the U.S. prison population either has an active substance use disorder or was incarcerated for crimes involving drugs or drug use.
• Lower-Income Prevalence: National data consistently show that people in households making under $20,000 per year have significantly higher rates of illicit drug use and alcohol misuse than those earning $75,000 or above.
• Poverty Overlaps: High-poverty neighborhoods often see compounded risk factors: poor access to healthcare, elevated stress levels, and limited supportive services.
• Cycle of Financial Strain: Addiction perpetuates financial instability, as funds meant for basic needs may go toward substances, leading to deeper poverty and, in some cases, homelessness.

If China stopped being the most cost-efficient supplier of the materials needed to produce Fentanyl tomorrow, the whole trade would simply find the next most cost-efficient supplier. In a time when car loan defaults are at an all-time high, where 1 in 3 Americans say they rely on credit cards to make ends meet, 60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, and an estimated 29 million American adults lack the ability to pay for needed medical care, it is no wonder where the Fentanyl Crisis really comes from. It is a crisis of despair, with millions of Americans coping at both ends, creating an interdependency feed back loop, like a snake eating its own tail.

Even though zee news was unable confirm the footage's accuracy

Listen here, bub, we don't need to "confirm" any kind of "accuracy" if it aligns with our racist view of China and Chinese people.

You've fully paid off your house? Because, if your house is under a mortgage, it's not your property.

Lol you still won't admit that you did nothing. Do you know who organizes the door knockers? THE DEMOCRATS. They were door knocking FOR THE DEMS. You go talk to Kamala fucking Harris and ask her why more people were not doing it, you go ask HER why it didn't change anything, you talk to the Democrats and ask them why they failed you. You couldn't identify Idealism if it was stapled to your own forehead.

What do you even think I'm talking about here, hmm? Door Knockers are the antithesis of idealism. They are agents in the material world, engaging with people directly, hearing their positions and making real attempts to offer them answers. They're engaging with the non-voter class and republicans in an attempt to create material change within the electorate. Republicans also door knock, for the same reason. What's idealism is YOU thinking that somehow people should have just "Done the right thing" and showed up and voted for someone who offered nothing to them. Republicans voted for Trump because he had clear and understandable messaging, Harris had absolutely awful messaging. If you're a Door Knocker and all you have to work with is garbage, then the only ones to blame are the ones who gave them the garbage. The Democrats.

If you want to "fight fascism" every two years by showing up to vote, you'll be living under fascism faster than you think. Get out, touch some grass, talk to your neighbors, stop leaving your political life in the hands of people who have no interest in offering you anything, that's called "Growing the fuck up".

See, if you had actually done something, you would have just answered that. You did nothing, did you?

I know people who were out door knocking in blue wall states in deeply red counties, as marginalized people, who have more empathy and understanding, and a grounded realistic view of why the Harris campaign failed you and us, than you seem to be expressing here.

If all you did was show up to vote, eat your pride. Now is the time for you to ACTUALLY go out and do something instead of pissing and shitting in the comment section of fucking lemmy.world of all places.

Grow the fuck up.

One thing I know I'm going to be doing is reading "Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)" by Dean Spade. From the first two paragraphs of the first chapter:

Mutual aid projects expose the reality that people do not have what they need and propose that we can address this injustice together. The most famous example in the United States is the Black Panther Party’s survival programs, which ran throughout the 1960s and 1970s, including a free breakfast program, free ambulance program, free medical clinics, a service offering rides to elderly people doing errands, and a school aimed at providing a rigorous liberation curriculum to children. The Black Panther programs welcomed people into the liberation struggle by creating spaces where they could meet basic needs and build a shared analysis about the conditions they were facing. Instead of feeling ashamed about not being able to feed their kids in a culture that blames poor people, especially poor Black people, for their poverty, people attending the Panthers’ free breakfast program got food and a chance to build shared analysis about Black poverty. It broke stigma and isolation, met material needs, and got people fired up to work together for change.

Recognizing the program’s success, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover famously wrote in a 1969 memo sent to all field offices that “the BCP [Breakfast for Children Program] represents the best and most influential activity going for the BPP [Black Panther Party] and, as such, is potentially the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for.” The night before the Chicago program was supposed to open, police broke into the church that was hosting it and urinated on all of the food. The government’s attacks on the Black Panther Party are evidence of mutual aid’s power, as is the government’s co-optation of the program: in the early 1970s the US Department of Agriculture expanded its federal free breakfast program—built on a charity, not a liberation, model—that still feeds millions of children today. The Black Panthers provided a striking vision of liberation, asserting that Black people had to defend themselves against a violent and racist government, and that they could organize to give each other what a racist society withheld.

People in your community already need help. You and your friends can start building a mutual aid network today, one that can help queer people, black people, and women in need. You can decide what kind of aid you can provide. Maybe you're offering rides to airports to women who need to travel out of state for medical care. Perhaps you're providing safe places and spaces for the Trans population in your area. Whatever it is, you'll feel more connected and more in control of your community, and put out a positive influence within it.

Along the way, you should also try and educate yourself so that you can educate others.

If you give me your vote unconditionally, then I have what I wanted and give up nothing in return. Even if you stand outside and shout at me after you gave me your vote, it still doesn't matter because you gave me what I wanted willingly with zero conditions. Clearly, my position on any topic is of no interest to you either, otherwise you would have tried to make a deal with me, but you didn't.

So how about this: You give me your vote, and I'll do whatever the fuck I want.

As opposed to?

Actual leftism. Liberalism is a Conservative movement.

So what is your plan exactly? You want to vote for a genocider, giving them the one thing you have in exchange, your one bargaining chip? And then what, write a strongly worded letter? Or are you one of those libs that intends to go back to brunch having "Done your part" in voting for "The lesser evil" who will still genocide the Palestinians? Could you be one of those people who want to "be done with politics" so that it's "no longer in your face anymore"? You don't strike me as the "organize my workforce towards collective action centered around Gaza" type.

When you are making demands, you need leverage. The baseline leverage you have, is your vote. You've not leveraged a single thing.

Well, that does make some sense. I swear some of the channels who have these sponsorships are the same channels that had them last time around too.

I had that same reaction. It actually happened around 2018 (where does the time go?)

https://www.polygon.com/2018/10/4/17932862/betterhelp-app-youtube-sponsorship-controversy-explained

We've definitely been here before. One of the interesting things about this article is that a lot of the videos they embedded are gone now.

Am I just old, even by internet standards? Because we've been here before. Better Help was blasted on the internet several years ago for their shady business practices. Several major YouTubers published "make good" videos about it, because of how bad the service was. Better Help was giving YouTubers and podcasters a shitload of money to promote their product, and in their terms they explicitly stated that they did not verify the credentials of their "therapists" and that it was on you to do that.

No its only for the instance. Lemmy.ee is still federated with lemmygrad.

This dudes account is 2 weeks old.

The mod log is public and federated, so you can go look up what they were seeing... Also, no one says anything like that on lemmygrad, but OK.

Because different instances have different rules. And communities have their own rules. wait till you learn that you only see coversations from the people your instance federates with. You could be seeing half the comments of a thread if the federation overlap between your instance and the host instance are not exactly the same.