More than 80,000 Americans each year are dying from fentanyl as the opioid epidemic has morphed into a grimmer, more sinister threat. What began as a crisis fueled by the reckless prescribing of painkillers has now become a deadly illicit trade in counterfeit OxyContin or Vicodin pills containing fentanyl at wildly inconsistent dosages. Depending on the amount of fentanyl used, even a single pill can be lethal.
China remains the primary source of fentanyl entering the United States. Historically, this has been in the form of finished pills shipped to consumers through international mail and express consignment carriers. But increasingly, chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl — referred to as precursor chemicals — are being sent to cartels in Mexico, where they are formulated into pills and trafficked across the border. As China cracks down on its illicit manufacturing sites, more of this illegal commerce is shifting to the precursor chemicals, and production routed through Mexico.
We must put an end to the illegal trade and production of this dangerously powerful opioid through sensible and overdue policies we can start putting in place today.
This starts with tightly regulating all the precursor chemicals, many of which escape existing restrictions, or evade oversight through constant remodification. As a recent Reuters investigation found, when part of illegal trade, the chemicals arrive as powders that are shipped by air, and the quantities needed to make huge numbers of fentanyl pills can fit in a jar or even a baggie. Sent in these small volumes, the illicit shipments can be hard to spot at interdiction sites or to be recognized if customs agents inspect them. Criminals often ship the chemicals into the United States rather than directly to Mexico, since it is easier to hide them among the large volume of packages that America receives. The chemicals are smuggled into Mexico, where turning them into fentanyl at drug cartel labs is a simple exercise — then trafficked back into the United States.
Despite these challenges, we can do more to disrupt the illicit trade of these chemicals.
In recent years, countries have imposed new restrictions on the chemicals used to make fentanyl. But so far, the measures have mostly focused on how the chemicals are being used, rather than controlling their transit at every point. Under American pressure, China has tightened the screws on illicit fentanyl manufacturing within its borders, placing all forms of fentanyl on its controlled substances list in 2019, and subjecting these drugs to stricter oversight. But the Chinese government has paid far less scrutiny to the booming trade in precursor chemicals. The United States needs to again demand that China zero in on these chemicals as part of its broader crackdown on fentanyl.
At the same time, the United States working with like-minded countries can institute more stringent global regulations based on international drug control agreements. Such regulations must also target new “pre-precursor” chemicals (more basic formulations of existing chemicals) that cartels use to evade scrutiny.
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