President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands in 2022 before their meeting on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Nusa Dua, in Bali, Indonesia. and Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to revive a joint crackdown on illegal drug trafficking in November, it sent a brief shock wave through the vast network of Chinese suppliers fueling the production of fentanyl.
“Possibly in the future there is some impact, but it’s not a problem right now,” said one Hubei-based salesperson for a chemical company that produces 1-Boc-4-AP — a fentanyl precursor — and the sedative xylazine. The person claimed the company had resumed sales of both compounds to Mexico in January after a six-week pause that started around the time of the Xi-Biden meeting.“Like water flowing around rocks … if there is a demand there is a way,” the person said.
China is the top global producer of the chemicals used to synthesize fentanyl, and much of the U.S. supply comes from illicit laboratories overseen by criminal groups in third-party countries, primarily Mexico, where cartels source Chinese chemicals and equipment, including pill presses. The business soon shifted to include the more lucrative trade in pharmaceutical chemicals, including 4-AP, a direct precursor to fentanyl.
“I underscored the importance of taking additional action, in particular by prosecuting those who are selling chemicals and equipment used to make fentanyl, meeting its international commitments to regulate all of the precursors that are controlled by the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs, and disrupting illicit financing networks,” said Blinken in a news conference following the talks.listing procedures on three precursors, including 4-AP, and is preparing to regulate further chemicals.
involved in the fentanyl industry, the vast majority of which are precursor manufacturers, dealers and pharmaceutical machinery companies. “Many of these companies are small in size and are able to resume operations quickly under different names. We encourage the PRC to take more deterrent enforcement action, such as public arrests,” the senior U.S. official said.
As broader U.S.-China relations sunk to a nadir in 2022 following a visit by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, counternarcotics cooperation became a casualty of the fraying ties: Beijing completely axed any communication on the topic. That cooperation was revived only last year when the Biden administration removed sanctions on the Chinese Ministry of Public Security’s Institute of Forensic Science, which was targeted over alleged abuses against ethnic Uyghurs.
The Post verified that some Chinese platforms that displayed advertisements for precursor chemicals in April had since censored some listingswith searches for the chemicals returning an error message citing “relevant laws, regulations, policies.”
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