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| 47,000 Americans died of Fentanyl overdose in 2014 alone. |
Despite the dangers, Chinese vendors offer to sell carfentanil openly online, for worldwide export, no questions asked, an Associated Press investigation has found. The AP identified 12 Chinese businesses that said they would export carfentanil to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium and Australia for as little as $2,750 a kilogram.
Carfentanil burst into view this summer as the latest scourge in an epidemic of opioid abuse that has killed tens of thousands in the U.S. alone. In China, the top global source of synthetic drugs, carfentanil is not a controlled substance. The U.S. government is pressing China to blacklist it, but Beijing has yet to act.
“We can supply carfentanil ... for sure,” a saleswoman from Jilin Tely Import and Export Co. wrote in broken English in a September email. “And it’s one of our hot sales product.” The AP did not actually order any drugs, or test whether the products on offer were genuine. China’s Ministry of Public Security declined multiple requests for comment.
For decades before being discovered by drug dealers, carfentanil and substances like it were researched as chemical weapons by the U.S., U.K., Russia, Israel, China, the Czech Republic and India, according to publicly available documents. They are banned from the battlefield under the Chemical Weapons Convention.
“It’s a weapon,” said Andrew Weber, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs from 2009 to 2014. “Companies shouldn’t be just sending it to anybody.”
Carfentanil is 100 times more powerful than fentanyl, a related drug that is itself up to 50 times stronger than heroin. Forms of fentanyl are suspected in an unsuccessful 1997 attempt by Mossad agents to kill a Hamas leader in Jordan, and were used to lethal effect by Russian forces against Chechen separatists who took hundreds of hostages at a Moscow theater in 2002.
The theater siege prompted the U.S. to develop strategies to counter carfentanil’s potential use as a tool of war or terrorism, according to Weber. “Countries that we are concerned about were interested in using it for offensive purposes,” he said. “We are also concerned that groups like ISIS could order it commercially.”
The DEA has “shared intelligence and scientific data” with China about controlling carfentanil, according to Russell Baer, a DEA special agent in Washington. “I know China is looking at it very closely,” he said. Delegations of top Chinese and U.S. drug enforcement officials met in August and September to discuss opioids, but failed to produce a substantive announcement on carfentanil.
China is not blind to the key role its chemists play in the opioid supply chain. Most synthetic drugs that end up in the United States come from China, according to the DEA. China already has controlled fentanyl and 18 related compounds, but despite periodic crackdowns, people willing to skirt the law are easy to find in China’s vast, freewheeling chemicals industry.
Vendors said they lied on customs forms, guaranteed delivery to countries where carfentanil is banned and volunteered strategic advice on sneaking packages past law enforcement. “The government should impose very serious limits, but in reality in China it’s so difficult to control because if I produce 1 or 2 kilograms, how will anyone know?” said Xu Liqun, president of Hangzhou Reward Technology, which offered to produce carfentanil to order. “They cannot control you, so many products, so many labs.”
Last October, China added 116 synthetic drugs to its controlled substances list. Acetylfentanyl, a weak fentanyl variant, was among them. Six months later, monthly seizures of acetylfentanyl in the U.S. were down 60 percent, DEA data obtained by the AP shows.
Several vendors contacted in September were willing to export carfentanil but refused to provide the far less potent acetylfentanyl. Seven companies, however, offered to sell acetylfentanyl despite the ban. Five offered fentanyl and two offered alpha-PVP, commonly known as flakka, which are also controlled substances in China.
Several vendors recommended shipping by EMS, the express mail service of state-owned China Postal Express & Logistics Co. “EMS is a little slow than Fedex or DHL but very safe, more than 99% pass rate,” a Yuntu Chemical Co. representative wrote in an email. EMS declined comment. A Yuntu representative hung up the phone when contacted by the AP and did not reply to emails. Soon after, the company’s website vanished.
Exclusive—Gov. Tom Ridge on Opioids: ‘It’s a Supply and Demand Problem; You Have to Attack Both’
Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge says Congress must pass a pending bill to close the shipping loophole allowing Chinese companies to sell lethal opioids to distributors in U.S. neighborhoods. “We worry about weapons of mass destruction,” he told Breitbart News. “But I think 30 pounds of fentanyl in the wrong hands is a weapon of mass destruction.”
In 2014, roughly 47,000 in the U.S. died from drug overdoses, especially from heroin and other opiates. Heroin overdose deaths more than tripled between 2010 and 2015. The bill, titled the Synthetics Trafficking and Overdose Prevention, or the “STOP Act,” is being championed by Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman.
Ridge, a senior advisor with the non-profit group “Americans for Securing All Packages” (ASAP), is working to halt the spread of the deadly opioid epidemic ravaging American families.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grimly noted in a January report that half a million people died from drug overdoses between 2000 and 2014. “It’s been an issue that’s growing in severity for the past two or three years,” said Ridge.
“Sometimes these problems have to rise to an extreme level before people start paying attention to it, although I think you started paying attention to it some time ago,” Ridge, who also served as the first Secretary of Homeland Security, told Breitbart News. “Clearly, President Trump started paying attention to it during the primary.”
“I think he’s one of a couple candidates in New Hampshire who spoke specifically about the postal loophole, which has turned out to be a wide-open front door to illicit drug trafficking, primarily from China,” Ridge continued.
During a New Hampshire campaign stop in early October 2016, Trump promised he would protect Americans from a massive influx of deadly, illicit narcotics “poisoning our youth.” The Granite State “was really the first glimpse I got at how serious a problem we have,” Trump said.
“They’re poisoning our youth. They’re poisoning more than our youth—they’re poisoning everybody. But they’re poisoning our youth. It’s tough enough out there. Our youth doesn’t have a chance with what’s happening, and we’re not going to let it happen anymore,” Trump had said. “We’re going to help the people that are so badly addicted. We’re going to help them… I’m going to stop the drugs from coming in.”
Ridge wants to continue the battle against the opioid influx. “I am hopeful that, one, we continue to raise awareness—that’s what we do at ASAP—and that, two, in a town looking for some bipartisan work to do together, that they follow the president’s lead, close the loophole, and support the STOP Act which has bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate,” Ridge said.
Asked what the U.S. could do to halt Chinese businesses from openly advertising that they are “happy to sell” opioids so powerful that they are considered chemical weapons to U.S. buyers, Ridge said the STOP Act would at least allow officials to inspect such packages. “The STOP Act does not pretend—does not suggest that it will eliminate, completely, the flow of illicit fentanyl from China or elsewhere,” Ridge said.
“But China, according to the DEA and multiple sources, is the primary source. So we’ve got pretty much the crosshairs on that as the number-one source. And the fact is that, if we can just get them to provide the electronic data as to who the sender is, who’s to receive it, what’s contained, what’s the way—you know, we’ve built some pretty sophisticated algorithms over the years that would at least give Customs and Border Protection enough information to question the contents to pull it aside and open it up for inspection.”
“That’s what the STOP Act does,” Ridge explained. “It’s not designed to end the flow. I think one of the issues that the State Department’s got to deal with, the ambassador’s got to deal with, is much stronger diplomatic position in time. And frankly, I’d think it would be helpful to the diplomatic work that we have to do with China and other countries if [we] had bipartisan legislation that was passed and signed into law by the president.”
The opioid-overdose epidemic has caught attention from Democratic politicians as well. Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill recently opened an investigation into pharmaceutical companies’ records inquiring about the drugs’ addictive qualities and the relation to marketing campaigns.
It should be noted that it may only take seven days to become addicted to opioids, according to the Utah Department of Health. One week of taking narcotic painkillers can suddenly deliver someone into a lifetime of addiction, or what’s left of it—before too many of already-metabolized morphine molecules bind with opioid receptors in the brain stem and shut down the user’s ability to draw their next breath.
Of course, heroin addiction can slowly consume one before one realizes it has, as one user explained: I have literally never met anyone who was introduced to heroin with a needle. That’s roughly the equivalent of taking your first drink of alcohol by butt-chugging moonshine out of a gas can. The reality is a lot less abrupt, and a lot scarier: Most people start by popping and smoking pills. In that stage, it never seems like a problem, because you can use daily for weeks with no withdrawal effects whatsoever.
“Once you’re at the stage where you’re even considering the needle, you long ago forgot about ‘squeamishness’ right along with ‘work’ and ‘everything else you ever wanted to accomplish in your life,’” the former user added.
Breitbart News also asked Ridge what he would say to American families ravaged by opioid addiction. “Well, I’m glad you said—you phrased it the right way,” Ridge sighed. “Because you may have someone in your family that’s addicted. You may have an individual that’s addicted, but it affects the family, friends of the family, and the broader community.”
Middle-aged whites account for one-third of all U.S. suicides. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention found that seven out of every 10 suicides were committed by white men in 2015.
Ridge said that communities must come together and help families hurt by addiction. “And so, as a broader community, we need to appreciate the horror that the family deals with, if they have a family member who’s addicted right now,” he said. “And, frankly, to look for ways to provide as much support and treatment as possible.”
“But I know it might be somewhat simplistic, but I know families… where there’s been addiction to drugs and alcohol,” Ridge said. “Sometimes, that intersession—and [getting] them to remediation—and get them to care, works. And sometimes it doesn’t.”
“And what do you say to the families?” Ridge asked again. “It’s difficult to live with that in your family. And I think I understand that as an observer. I’m sure it breaks your heart, and for many people, it may break the bank as they’re trying to deal with it. But I would just encourage them to do everything they can to get the loved one that’s addicted, get them as much help as soon as possible. There has to be intervention.”
Breitbart News also asked Ridge whether the Trump administration’s two-pronged strategy of cracking down on drug traffickers while expanding treatment options for those addicted to deadly drugs is effective. Ridge said it was: “I think it’s the right strategy.”
“It’s supply and demand,” he explained. “Supply: you go after those who push out the subscription—the docs that over-prescribe. You go after the labs. You go after the foreign sources. You go after the supply.”
“On the demand side? You have to intervene,” he continued. “You have to try to help. You have to try to rehabilitate. And some of these efforts are going to be successful—some are not. But simply talking about supply isn’t enough. And so, any effort that the government, both the state and the federal government, can do to support families and to support the kind of medical, necessary intervention—I think it’s critically important. You have to have to have it.”
“It’s a supply and demand problem. You have to attack both,” he added. Ridge also added that a suspect in New Jersey had been arrested with 30 pounds of fentanyl. “We worry about weapons of mass destruction,” he said. “But I think 30 pounds of fentanyl in the wrong hands is a weapon of mass destruction.”
Ridge pointed to a Breitbart News story explaining that more Americans had died from opioid overdoses in 2015 than they did of gun violence: “It’s about time we got serious. So, yes, the question of supply, yeah, let’s cut it off and demand—let’s try to get some intervention and reduce the demand.”
According to the CDC, “prescription opioids in the U.S. nearly quadrupled from 1999 to 2014,” although a former federal prosecutor claimed painkiller and heroin addictions should be classified as “distinct” from one another.
An Associated Press report revealed that drug wholesalers shipped roughly 780 million prescription painkiller pills to West Virginia alone in only six years, or 433 pills for every man, woman, and child in that state. The report also stated 1,728 West Virginians fatally overdosed on painkilling pills in those six years.
“Distributors have fed their greed on human frailties and to criminal effect. There is no excuse and should be no forgiveness,” a former pharmacist said about the painkillers’ death toll.
President Trump’s budget blueprint
pledged to commit some $675 million to combat drug trafficking, help lift
opioid abusers out of addiction, and prevent more Americans from succumbing to
the the narcotics epidemic.
Related posts at following links:
America's Heroin Crisis: Pain Killers and Balck-Tar Heroin
Related posts at following links:
America's Heroin Crisis: Pain Killers and Balck-Tar Heroin