Chinese fentanyl manufacturers (and the funding they provide) are at the center of the U.S. Senate race between incumbent Sen. Bob Casey and his Republican opponent, Dave McCormick.
Casey, 64, a third-term incumbent, accused McCormick, 58, of “profiting from people’s pain” through his role as CEO of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, which under his leadership invested $1.7 million in Chinese fentanyl manufacturer Yichang Humanwell. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Monday.
However, the media outlet reported that Casey himself does in fact own shares in HumanWell.
As of June, he owned about 3 cents of the company’s stock through an index fund that is part of the College Savings Mutual Fund, but he does not manage it himself, The Inquirer reported.
“Bob Casey has exposed his hypocrisy and lies in his ads, which are proof of why Pennsylvanians are tired of career politicians,” McCormick said in a statement to the newspaper on Friday.
“Casey had 18 years to secure our border and stop fentanyl from killing 100,000 Americans last year alone. His weakness has made this crisis unimaginably worse.”
Meanwhile, Democrats have pointed to the fact that they did not directly choose to invest in HumanWell and that McCormick made the decision knowingly.
“David McCormick will say anything to cover up his betrayal of Pennsylvanians for profit, but the facts are clear: he directly invested millions of dollars into Chinese-made fentanyl and profited off the pain of Pennsylvanians,” Casey County spokeswoman Maddie McDaniel told the Inquirer.
“David McCormick decided to invest in a Chinese fentanyl company; Bob Casey did not.”
Fentanyl caused 4,000 fatal overdoses in Pennsylvania last year alone.
But tracing its path to the United States is often unclear and far from easy.
For example, Humanwell, China’s largest fentanyl manufacturer, says it only produces fentanyl that is legal for medical use in China and does not export it to the United States.
Still, most of the deadly drugs entering the United States are manufactured in China and brought to Mexico, where they are mixed with other drugs to create deadly cocktails, and from there they are often smuggled across the border into the United States through legal ports of entry.
Given the illegality of drug trafficking, it’s difficult to know with 100% certainty that HumanWell’s products won’t make it into the US, the Inquirer noted.
