Chinese officials have disputed US claims that it is the main source of fentanyl-related drugs that have killed thousands of drug users in the US.
Deseret News reported that the Chinese National Narcotics Control Commission have told Associated Press (AP) that the assertions are unsubstantiated, and that they “lack the support of sufficient numbers of actual, confirmed cases”, it said in a fax to the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency). In a letter which was also sent to AP, the Chinese “urged the US to provide more evidence about China’s role as a source country”.
However, the DEA claimed that their investigations “consistently lead back to China”, and their data shows that when China “regulates synthetic drugs”, the number of US seizures go down. Russel Baer, DEA special agent in Washington, said: “China is not the only source of the problem, but they are the dominant source for fentanyls along with precursor chemicals and pill presses that are being exported from China to the US, Canada and Mexico”, in many cases within printer cartridge shipments.
Recently the Beijing narcotics commission invited a team of AP journalists to a discussion on the issues of China’s opioid trade, because of their concern about international perceptions. Both the US and China, the site said, need to cooperate to deal with the opioid abuse that has “killed more than 300,000 Americans since 2000”, with fentanyl 50 times stronger than heroin, and used by drug dealers to bulk out “heroin, cocaine and counterfeit prescription pills”, some hidden in printer cartridges.
The US Congress wants to legislate punishing countries that are a source for opioids, but so far there is not enough data on seizures of fentanyl or related drugs by country of origin. Baer commented that until two years ago the DEA didn’t even have a fentanyl category, and that sometimes drugs were wrongly identified by chemists, meaning that samples could be incorrectly logged as other drugs.
Meanwhile the article noted that “the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy declined to comment”, and that the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said that it only had “data by country of origin for 2015”, including that “61 kilograms of fentanyl seized last year came from Mexico”, though the rest came from China.
DEA officials said Mexico is a trans-shipment point, but the cartels are the “key bulk suppliers of fentanyl to the US”, although unofficial statements from the Mexican officials say that fentanyl is coming from China, and only “two labs trying to produce fentanyl from scratch” were found in Mexico recently. Despite China’s dispute, the authorities there have been “proactive in trying to stop fentanyl manufacture and export”, the article concluded.