Comment by lenkite | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lenkite | Hacker News Reader

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I am truly disappointed at the downvotes and the complete lack of research done by down-voters. The answer to your question is "Yes" not because of cost prohibition - but because most fentayl imports are less than 700 grams - which get lost in the massive flood of UPS e-Packet shipments and thus near impossible to inspect. I beg you to carry out your own research before expressing such disbelief.

Please read this briefing by the US trade commission https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/executive_briefings/e...

"The illicit trade follows the standard e-commerce model of small-scale shipments and B2C and B2B distribution channels. The trade is SME-focused, with small-scale Chinese suppliers primarily exporting to individuals and small independent U.S. criminal networks.China was the source of 97 percent of inbound shipments of high-purity fentanyl during 2016 and 2017"

"Given the high purity of Chinese fentanyl, most illicit imports are less than 700 grams (1.5 lbs.) per shipment. "

> I am truly disappointed at at the downvotes and the complete lack of research done by down-voters. The answer to your question is "Yes" not because of cost prohibition - but because most fentayl imports are less than 700 grams - which get lost in the massive flood of UPS e-Packet shipments and thus near impossible to inspect.

So what? 100 grams would be bought, by the numbers above, for $600 and sold for $8,000. If shipping cost $200, no one would care. That would add $2,000 in shipping costs to the full kilogram, but, again, no one would care. It's just not significant.

Do you have an argument to advance that isn't ludicrous on its face?

I guess that if shipping cost $200, only very lucrative goods like fentanyl would be shipped. That would reduce that the total shipping volume to something that was possible for the border guards to inspect in order to find drugs.

It is not a matter of the shipping cost. Can you please state which statement do you find ludicrous ?

1. Chinese fentayl shipments do not need to have high weight due to purity. Mentioned explicitly in the trade commission report linked above.

2. Due to 1), it is convenient to leverage e-packet shipment as inspection of massive volume of e-packet shipments is near impossible.

3. Small-scale US businesses were adversely affected by e-packet rates https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/trump...

>> There were a truckload of articles [...] on how this "international China shipping" being cheaper than "domestic shipping" destroyed small businesses

> It is not a matter of the shipping cost.

Seems like your original point was centered on shipping costs destroying domestic businesses. In light of the downvotes it became mostly a matter of drug imports in small, cheap packages:

> most fentayl imports are less than 700 grams - which get lost in the massive flood of UPS e-Packet shipments and thus near impossible to inspect

Which is irrelevant, shipping costs (within reason) won't change this.

"Seems like your original point was centered on shipping costs"

I made both points right at the beginning, though the thread got focused around one of them.

1. e-packet shipping cost adversely affecting US businesses

2. e-packet being used to hide fentayl shipments thanks to massive volume and delivery convenience. (cheap and fast)

"Which is irrelevant, this will be the case regardless of the shipping costs, within reason."

I fail to understand this statement. How will reduction of e-packets - one of the major causes of the bloat of international packages not help in inspection ?

If you reduce the total number of e-packets by removing the subsidy, then it becomes far easier to inspect which packages have fentayl and which do not. EMS shipments apparently quadrupled after the e-packet scheme was introduced which adversely affected all inspection procedures as agencies could not cope with the volume.

Reduce the volume by removing the subsidy - the inspection agencies can then manage their job.

So we can agree the shipping isn't make it cost prohibitive. Your point about there being less hay making finding needles easier might be possible (although I don't think it matters, as with our southern border, a higher detection rate just means you need more chance to get the desired total smuggled). I would imagine there would just be more product shipped to Central and South America and then imported like everything else south of the border, cars, trucks, boats planes. "The flow of fentanyl to the United States in the near future will probably continue to be diversified" [1] Production in those places might also increase. Moral of my story is this change in shipping prices will have no long term effect on amount of fentanyl brought into the US; though, it might very well increase the involvement of SotB cartels. If there are buyers, these will be sellers.

[1] https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-03/DEA_GOV_DIR-...

Perhaps, but until those supply chains are established and proven to be effective, one should address the way 97% of all fentayl enters the US today - e-packet from China.

Just because opponents will likely evolve their tactics in the future should not prevent one from mitigating their extraordinarily successful tactic that is running in the present.

In FY 2012, USPS handled about 27 million ePackets from China. This increased to nearly 500 million ePackets by 2017. (Thanks to that disastrous subsidy agreement in 2011)

None of our inspection agencies could cope with this volume. Remove the discount-from-China subsidy, this will automatically reduce the volume of all e-packets and thus will ameliorate the load on inspection agencies.

The supply chains from Central and South America are already established and proven to be effective. What you seem to be ignoring is the demand part of supply and demand. If there is demand, there will be people importing drugs, increasing USPS pricing won't stop anything that from happening.

I think even if you reduced volume to 2012 levels its not going to make any practical difference. Like, 1 gram of pure fentanyl is on the order of 1000+ doses... You can profitably smurf it in anything.

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