CHINA IS WAGING CHEMICAL WARFARE ON U.S., NEW YORK'S PRISON GUARDS ARE AMONG THE VICTIMS
'IT'S TIME FOR US TO GET PROACTIVE,’ SAYS OUTLAW COUNTRY RAPPER JELLYROLL
A nurse from the maximum-security Upstate Correctional Facility in Malone, New York was rushed to a hospital Saturday night after suspected exposure to synthetic drugs—three days after more than 20 workers at the same prison suffered similar exposure. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
MALONE, NEW YORK Aug. 10, 2025
EDITORIAL
Another day, another dozen or so New York State Correction Officers exposed to a chemical weapon unleashed on the American public by China.
One-by-one the afflicted officers walked out of the emergency room here into the blindingly hot August sun. Clad in civilian clothes, they carried their blue uniforms in clear plastic garbage bags. They all had the same shell-shocked look on their faces: like condemned prisoners being led to the gallows. Like sheep being led to slaughter.
Last Friday, about 12 were taken to the hospital by volunteer ambulance crews from the small towns surrounding the prison where they work along the Canadian border, in upstate New York, far away from the gleaming glass-and-steel towers of Manhattan and the Byzantine halls of power in the State’s Capital at Albany.
Colleagues had driven their cars and pick-up trucks from the prison to the hospital parking lot, so the victims could get home. A sergeant, still in his white shirt, and two other officers stood by the door to the emergency room, waiting to commiserate with comrades. They knew they've been abandoned, by New York's leaders, who are supposed to be looking out for them, and by almost everyone else too.
Since 2021, the guards and their union have complained about “mysterious” chemical exposures to the bureaucrats who run the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, the state agency they work for. They've also complained to Gov. Kathy Hochul, the big boss who bears overall responsibility for their working conditions. When those complaints were ignored, they complained to the public vis-a-vis the press.
Nothing has changed for the better. It's only gotten worse.
Last Friday wasn't the first time I'd witnessed Correction Officers from New York's maximum-security disciplinary prison, the Upstate Correctional Facility, wheeled into the emergency room at the Alice Hyde Medical Center. The first time was back on Jan. 26, when three guards and two nurses were afflicted, as The Free Lance reported.
That happened three days after 12 guards, seven nurses and an office assistant became light-headed and some started vomiting after being exposed to suspected synthetic opioid drugs at Upstate.
Because prisons and their operations are intentionally shielded from public view, we didn't know it at the time but one of those nurses lost her unborn child after her exposure, her husband told The Free Lance.
When New York's prison guards went on strike a month after that, some strikers cited the chemical exposures as one of their reasons.
A Correction Officer from the maximum-security Upstate Correctional Facility in Malone, New York was rushed to a hospital Saturday night after suspected exposure to synthetic drugs—three days after more than 20 workers at the same prison suffered similar exposure. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
Nationwide, a plane-load of almost 200 Americans die from drug overdoses everyday. More than two-thirds of those deaths are caused by Fentanyl—a deadly synthetic opioid—or Fentanyl-based variants.
Until 2019, China was the principal source of Fentanyl illegally sold in America. As a bi-partisan investigation by the House Committee on the Chinese Communist Party found in 2024, the CCP "promotes" the Fentanyl crisis in the U.S., subsidizes Fentanyl manufacturers, protects Fentanyl traffickers and benefits from the political and social disorder sown in America by the crisis—chiefly political polarization caused by a difference of opinion over the proper reaction.
In response to pressure from the U.S. in 2019, China began regulating Fentanyl. Instead of manufacturing Fentanyl directly, Chinese companies began wholesaling the precursor chemicals needed to make it to central and South American drug cartels. Today, cartels finish making Fentanyl, smuggle it into the U.S., and sell it either directly or through local dealers.
China uses Fentanyl as an asymmetric weapon against the U.S.
As Foreign Policy reports, when tensions between China and the U.S. rise, China's enforcement of Fentanyl regulation falls.
"After then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022, which deeply angered Beijing, China fully cut off all counternarcotics talks with the United States along with all other major areas of joint action, showing that it was willing to weaponize cooperation to pursue better terms in the relationship," the venerable news magazine reported.
Even the Liberal New York Times—which favors free trade with China regardless of its negative impact on the U.S. and American workers—agrees: "Chinese officials have tended to use the fentanyl issue as leverage over the United States, cooperating only when they receive something in return."
Not only is China the source of the drugs killing tens of thousands of Americans every year, it also helps dealers distribute them by allowing them to advertise their services on Tik Tok, a social media platform popular with youthful users controlled by the Chinese Government—as all businesses in the Totalitarian Dictatorship are.
For example. A Tik Tok account called "gas.store42" advertises Fentanyl-dipped legal papers for sale that are typically used to smuggle drugs into prisons. On July 16, the account posted a video capturing a gloved hand dipping paper into amber liquid in a metal pan with the words "K2prisonsheets / 3ple soaked sheets / D!ablo."
The video informs viewers interested in purchasing the contraband narcotics to contact the uses via the encrypted social media app Telegram: "Tele:GasKT2."
A week later, "gas.store42" broadcast another video advertising its services: "K2sheets on deck."
The account has 28 videos capturing alleged drugs and offering them for sale. It remains active as of this writing.
Pres. Donald Trump signed an Executive Order banning Tik Tok as a national security threat in 2020, but it was blocked by a court injunction that September. Pres. Joe Biden repealed Trump's Executive Order when he became president in 2021. Congress banned Tik Tok in 2024, but Pres. Trump reversed his previous opposition to Tik Tok and paused the ban in 2025.
As the Fentanyl crisis shows, China is an enemy of the U.S. We should treat it like an enemy, not a friend. We should be doing everything we can to limit China's power—first by stripping it of the American factories that have relocated there.
At home, we need to treat Fentanyl addicts like the victims of international terrorism they are. Given China's deep involvement in the international drug trade, American Fentanyl addicts are no different than those murdered by al-Qaeda during its terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11.
Both the people confined in New York's prisons and the people who work there deserve better. As the outlaw country rap star JellyRoll testified to the U.S. Senate in support of new laws to counter the Fentanyl crisis in 2024, "It is time for us to get proactive."
"I was a part of the problem," the recovered addict and formerly-incarcerated 40-year-old said. “I am here now, standing as a man that wants to be a part of the solution.”
“I was the uneducated man in the kitchen playing chemist with drugs I knew absolutely nothing about,” he continued, “just like these drug dealers are doing right now when they're mixing every drug on the market with fentanyl and they're killing the people we love."
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