Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

It's legally exported...

Gatsby

Reality Check: From CNN no less.

An agreement won in that meal – and taking effect this week – will see China schedule fentanyl and its derivatives as a controlled substance, a victory for the Trump administration that the White House says could initiate an immediate and “fairly rapid decrease” in overdose deaths in the US.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/02/politics/chinese-fentanyl-trump-backstory/index.html

Why do you think that Democrats opened our southern border?

A new government report out Tuesday details how opioid trafficking in the United States has changed in recent years, with Mexico now a "dominant source" of the country's fentanyl supply and synthetic opioids rapidly saturating drug markets.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/08/politics/fentanyl-commission-report/index.html

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

Controlled, but still legally exported...

It's used in the making of various medications...

TexaCan Loc: Homeward Bound!

There’s a little more to it, right CD! 😉 The bottom line is…….. it is coming from China!


https://www.npr.org/2020/11/17/916890880/we-are-shipping-to-the-u-s-china-s-fentanyl-sellers-find-new-routes-to-drug-user

He is a slight, bespectacled man. Colleagues at the industrial materials company where he works describe him as a humorous but diligent employee, known for driving his white Jeep around town in northwestern China's Ningxia region to meet potential clients.

Unbeknownst to them, he goes by Benjamin Chen online, where he has a whole other business: He is a popular seller of the chemicals used to make the potent synthetic opioid fentanyl. NPR has identified him but is not using his real name because of the illegal activity in which he's involved.

Chen is one of more than 100 vendors who market fentanyl or related chemicals out of facilities across China, and his story illustrates how networks are getting around international efforts to crack down on the supply chain of lethal synthetic opioids. In an interview with NPR, however, Chen categorically denied that he manufactures or sells any illegal substances.

For years, China has been a primary source of fentanyl trafficked into the United States. It is a powerful prescription drug for severe pain that's made and sold illegally. It led to more than 37,000 overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2019, part of a national opioid crisis that has worsened this year during the coronavirus pandemic, according to federal health authorities.

Sponsor Message

Street Fentanyl Surges In Western U.S., Leading To Thousands Of Deaths
NATIONAL
Street Fentanyl Surges In Western U.S., Leading To Thousands Of Deaths
Under international pressure, China's government banned the production and sale of fentanyl and many of its variants in May 2019, resulting in a significant reduction in the country's illicit fentanyl trade.

But more than a year later, Chinese vendors have tapped into online networks to brazenly market fentanyl analogs and the precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl, and ship them directly to customers in the U.S. and Europe as well as to Mexican cartels, according to an NPR investigation and research from the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, or C4ADS, a nonprofit data analysis group. (The center receives some of its funds from the U.S. and U.K. governments.)

Some of the substances are outlawed in China and internationally. Others are so new they are not yet banned, are harder to detect and regulate, and they can be used in basic chemical processes to produce illegal drugs.

Chinese vendors are often camouflaged by a complex network of corporate entities registered in far-flung cities along China's interior, where they use sophisticated shipping methods to bypass screening measures and where law enforcement scrutiny is often laxer than in bigger cities such as Beijing or Shanghai. Thousands of doses can be shipped together in small, hidden packages.

"Many Chinese networks involved in the production and advertising of fentanyl quickly adapted to increased legal constraints by modifying their techniques to exploit loopholes in chemical restrictions and disguise their activities," said Michael Lohmuller, a C4ADS analyst and report co-author.

Hard to ban

When China began banning fentanyl-related compounds, it was hailed as a major victory for U.S. narcotics authorities and diplomats, who had lobbied China for years to strictly regulate the substances more broadly as a class. Previously, Chinese narcotics authorities criminalized only specific fentanyl offshoots.

Months after China's class ban last year, as tensions escalated between the Trump administration and the government under China's leader Xi Jinping, Chinese-made fentanyl compounds once again became a divisive topic.

"President Xi said this would stop — it didn't," President Trump tweeted in August 2019.

China's government refutes this, saying its ban and crackdown on Internet advertising, sales and shipments have been effective.

"Currently, there is basically no information related to the illegal sales of fentanyl-class chemicals on websites within Chinese borders or pharmaceutical and chemical platforms," China's National Narcotics Control Commission said in a statement to NPR. "But due to the openness, anonymity, convenience, cross-border nature of the Internet, any country would have a difficult time completely eradicating illegal information."

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration notes that the detected amount of Chinese fentanyl shipments has dropped dramatically since the ban.

"It was all coming through the mail, aircraft, not in large quantities because it was so pure the fentanyl that they were making over in China ... but once they classified entire analogs of fentanyl, it made a huge difference," said Matt Donahue, the DEA deputy chief of operations who oversees the agency's work abroad.

Vendors create new distribution strategy

Despite the drop in fentanyl shipments from China, nimble Chinese vendors have developed new distribution strategies by producing and selling the precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl.

Benjamin Chen is among the many vendors in the country who adopted these new strategies. He and his colleagues built up a robust online synthetic drug operation over the last decade at Shanghai Huilitongda Biological Technology Co. Ltd., which is registered as a pharmaceutical company, according to Chinese corporate records.

On Facebook, where he did much of his advertising, Chen had a reputation as a fast and reliable vendor, according to social media reviews left by nearly a dozen customers. "Benjamin Chen is the real deal," someone identified as a customer wrote in a Facebook post in December 2018. "If he can't do it, nobody can."

Potential clients could inspect grainy snapshots of nondescript powders and pills on Facebook. Occasionally, Chen replied directly to loyal customers, even paying for a Lyft ride to the hospital as compensation when one customer complained he had overdosed on Chen's product.

Sometimes operating under the pseudonym "King Sun" or "Sun King," he also advertised his chemical wares openly on LinkedIn, Twitter and Vimeo before and after the class ban last year.

Chen adapted to the ban by selling fentanyl precursors, or what he called "hot products for research chemicals" — compounds that are only a few chemical steps away from a fentanyl analog and that are not always criminalized. Other substances on sale included a sometimes deadly synthetic opioid also known as "pink," and synthetic cannabinoids. ( This is just part of this lengthy article )

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

Yes... It is...

You should educate your children of the dangers drug use entails...

And secure your border...

TexaCan Loc: Homeward Bound!

My children are in their 50’s…………😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Our border……..not secure!

But that doesn’t change any of the facts about your chosen country or it’s diabolical dictator and the CCP!

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

Diabolically engaging in free trade with another sovereign nation...

The sheer horror😱😱😱

Big dog

I blame it all on Richard Nixon for opening trade with China back in ‘72.

nwtk2007 Loc: Texas

Singapore does!!

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

Trade is fine...

But border security needs to be stricter...

Start executing drug traffickers and dealers...

There's a reason China doesn't have an option crisis...

Big dog

I truly believe that the USA should put our troops on our southern border and to hell with the rest of the world !!!!!

okie don

One would think, if they had an IQ their hate size, that with over 40 confirmed terrorists discovered crossing our south border, we got a problem here in river city.

okie don

Seems Mayorass doesn't give a rats ass.

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

Barring a few strategic alliances I agree....

Securing the northern border is becoming increasingly advisable as well...

nwtk2007 Loc: Texas

I do too.