In what the White House described as "a wonderful humanitarian gesture," Chinese President Xi Jinping promised the US President Donald Trump to categorize Fentanyl as a "controlled substance." This would mean that Chinese companies who are found to be guilty of supplying the synthetic opioid will be subject to China's maximum penalty under the law. For Chinese factory owners, that would mean potentially facing the death penalty.
The step is one among significant issues discussed between China and the United States at a working dinner held at the sidelines of the G20 Summit held in Buenos Aires on Dec. 1.
China has long been coordinating with the US government regarding the proliferation of illegal fentanyl in the American soil. For instance, in March 2017, the Chinese government-controlled carfentanil, furanyl, fentanyl, valeryl fentanyl, and acryl fentanyl. In July in the same year, China additionally controlled four psychoactive substances, according to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.
Ever since DEA and Chinese officials consistently communicated to each other to work together and exchange data regarding their respective investigations on fentanyl substance. The two nations have since shared results of their individual scientific data gathering, trafficking data trends, and other related steps that resulted in tougher measures to identify deadly substances for government control.
Fentanyl, being a synthetic opioid, has the potency of 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine. It was originally created to manage pain for cancer patients who are undergoing treatments. Due to its powerful opioid properties, however, people found ways to abuse it by either adding it to heroin to increase its potency or adding it to heroin to maximize profits. In the latter, users are deceived that they are purchasing pure-grade heroin, paying for the drugs' actual hefty price. Since the users are actually ingesting Fentanyl and not heroin, the normal reaction would be for users to increase the dosage, resulting in deaths by overdose.
Paul Knierim, DEA's deputy chief operations, said because of fentanyl's low dosage range and potency, a kilogram of it bought in China for $3,000 to $5,000 can bring in as much as $1.5 million in revenue for illegal suppliers. In return, this amount of Fentanyl could already be fatal for as many as 500,000 people.
Knierim said since there are as many as 160,000 Chinese chemical companies operating legally, there are as many illicit drug manufacturers that could source their supplies from China.
Deaths by overdose claimed the lives of as many 72,287 Americans in 2017 alone. Of these deaths, 49,000 were because of Fentanyl abuse.
