Why is this different than the cocaine or heroin supply chain? Or why did mention this as a response to:

> I'm not sure we can blame our fentanyl problems on China any more than our cocaine problems on Colombia or our heroin problems on Mexico.

I'm not sure how a trade war on legal goods with one current producer of an untracked import addresses the demand for the drug or the domestic dealers. Buyers change suppliers all the time. And you're not putting a tariff on what's shipped clandestinely from clandestine labs.

China has been dragging its feet for years when it comes to banning fentanyl analogues when in the past they were quick to literally execute their citizens for manufacturing legal highs a decade ago.

The scale of the operations suggest that the state is involved. It used to be the case that actual clandestine labs would produce a kilogram or drum of illicit substances here and there, which is what happens in some Canadian labs. However, we're regularly intercepting unprecedented amounts of fentanyl analogues from China.

There's literally no where else in the world where both the manufacturing ability and severe lack of accountability both exist to produce novel fentanyl analogues in excess.

Also, China is selling thousands of doses of fentanyl to individual American kids online, so there's that, too.

Well, at that scale tariffs on other things could be used as a cudgel to encourage enforcement on the Chinese facilities by China, sure. There would still be some fentanyl available, and opioid users are fairly flexible with the specific opioids they use. Heroin, oxycontin, hydrocodone, codeine, and such tend to come from elsewhere. As one lab in China shuts down, another in China could pop up. Or in Nigeria, or in Pakistan, or in Venezuela.

I lived in Missouri before we had to sign for psuedoephedrine. Trust me when I say busting a lab here and there doesn't stop production. Reports I've read say you can invest $4,000 to easily make a kilo of fentanyl and after cutting and distribution it's worth $1,500,000 ( such as https://www.gangsterismout.com/p/fentanyl-w18.html ). Carfentanyl is supposed to be basically as easy to make and about 100x as powerful. This leads me to believe no state sponsorship is required to quickly ramp up production. If you can sell a $4k investment for over a hundred million dollars, you can ramp up quite quickly for your next several thousand kilos.