2023-11-17 22:41:47
That the synthetic drug fentanyl was high on President Joe Biden’s agenda when he met Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week surprised observers given the simmering crises around the world. But a deeper look explains the explosiveness: Last year, almost 74,000 people in the USA died of a fentanyl overdose. That’s 200 every day. The number of deaths has been growing continuously for ten years, although recently it has been somewhat slower.
Chinese chemical companies play a key role in the production chain for the deadly drug: They supply the precursors for fentanyl, from which fentanyl is then produced as powder, pills or as an admixture to other drugs, primarily in Mexican laboratories. Xi Jinping has now assured the American President that he will take action against the Chinese suppliers. From the perspective of author and drug trafficking expert Sam Quinones, this is a success. The authoritarian Chinese regime can close whatever it wants. FBI chief Christopher Wray recently confirmed this in a congressional hearing.
Do actions follow words?
However, joy is premature because it is not yet clear how the Chinese government will follow up on its assurances with action. In addition, in the global world of drugs, one repeatedly encounters unintended side effects of political measures that can have fatal consequences. Chinese chemical and pharmaceutical companies began smuggling fentanyl into America in 2013. The drug is a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times more potent than heroin. It becomes addictive in a short time. In 2013, 3,000 Americans died of an overdose, 20,000 in 2016 and 55,000 in 2020.
Sterile equipment for drug use: including needles, tapes and cotton balls: Image: Laif
The administrations of Barack Obama and Donald Trump invested significant diplomatic capital to convince China to ban exports, reports Brookings security expert Vanda Felbab-Brown. With success. In 2019, Beijing announced a ban on the production and export of fentanyl, with a few licensed exceptions. However, this success did not bring any relief – on the contrary. With the ban, Chinese chemical companies focused on supplying raw materials that were shipped via containers to Mexico and processed into fentanyl there. With the Mexicans, however, the business took on a new dimension: from individual production to mass production.
Until then, the Chinese companies had been sending fentanyl through the mail in small one-pound packages to dealers in Ohio, West Virginia or Kentucky, Quinones reports. The opioid epidemic became particularly rampant there after doctors stopped prescribing the addictive prescription painkiller Oxycontin on a large scale. However, the small packs limited the problem.
Production in Mexico
“All that changed when Mexicans started making fentanyl,” Quinones says. Because they had decades of experience smuggling large cargoes into the USA. The new global division of labor stipulated that the necessary preliminary products and pill presses were delivered from China to Mexico. All sorts of Mexican groups quickly learned to make fentanyl, according to Quinone’s account. They had years of experience producing another synthetic drug: meth, or methamphetamine.
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