US and China to hold high-level talks to curb fentanyl crisis

BEIJING – The United States and China will hold formal high-level talks in Beijing next week aimed at limiting the flow of fentanyl into the United States, a senior Chinese official told NBC News, after the U.S. suspended it for more than a year. He told NBC News that he plans to resume anti-drug cooperation. We are suffering from what is said to be the worst drug crisis in history.

China, which U.S. officials claim is the main source of precursor chemicals synthesized into fentanyl by Mexican drug cartels, has pledged further cooperation with the U.S. in combating the crisis. There is. It also continues to avoid responsibility for it.

“We believe that through this cooperation, both countries can strengthen their law enforcement capabilities,” Yu Haibin, one of China’s top drug enforcement officials, said in an exclusive interview this week. “We will achieve remarkable results in the fight against fentanyl substances, including their precursors.”

But he also reiterated China’s claim that America’s fentanyl problem stems from the public’s constant demand for fentanyl.

“The crisis in the United States was not created by China. Rather, its roots are within the United States itself,” said Yu, deputy director of the Drug Enforcement Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security and deputy director-general of the National Drug Control Commission. Told.

Chinese authorities did not provide details about a planned anti-drug conference in Beijing, which has not yet been made public. The White House declined to confirm the meeting.

The United States has accused China of contributing to the fentanyl crisis that, along with other opioids, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and devastated communities across the country in recent years. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 80,000 people died from opioid overdoses in the U.S. in 2021 alone, and about 88% of those deaths were caused by synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.

The new U.S.-China Drug Task Force’s meeting early next week is part of a delicate effort to improve relations between the world’s two largest economies, which have fallen to their worst level in decades. The creation of the working group was one of the outcomes of President Joe Biden’s first meeting in a year with Chinese President Xi Jinping in California in November.

China made these talks conditional on the lifting of U.S. trade sanctions on Chinese government research institutes, which the U.S. lifted immediately after the Biden-Xi meeting. NBC News was granted rare access to a laboratory in Beijing that examines evidence and issues reports for use in court proceedings. Both the United States and China claim the lab is essential to controlling fentanyl.

Yu said the lifting of sanctions was a “positive start.”

“We believe and hope the American people believe that China will keep its promises, and we stand ready to cooperate with the United States and other countries around the world on drug enforcement.”

who‘Is there any responsibility?

U.S. officials blame much of the current opioid crisis on China, but experts say the crisis began in the 1990s with the overprescription of legal painkillers, which led to drugs such as fentanyl. The situation is steadily worsening as illegal and highly lethal drugs are being replaced.

“We know that global fentanyl supply chains that end in the death of Americans often begin with chemical companies in China,” the Department of Justice said in a statement. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in October when he announced the new indictments. their employees.

In 2019, China permanently classified all variants of fentanyl as controlled substances and took other steps to stem the flow of finished fentanyl from China to the United States, but since then the United States has has not been captured. But the United States says Chinese companies are instead selling the precursor chemicals needed to synthesize fentanyl to Mexican drug cartels, which then move the finished product to the United States.

Cooperation between the two countries slowed in 2020 when the United States imposed trade sanctions on China’s Ministry of Public Security Forensic Research Institute over China’s alleged abuses of Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic minorities. China was further incensed in August 2022 when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, which is claimed by China, and announced the suspension of all counter-drug cooperation with the United States.

U.S. officials have prioritized combating fentanyl in efforts to improve U.S.-China relations. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators made fentanyl a major focus of their meeting with President Xi in Beijing last year, explaining how fentanyl has devastated communities.

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D.N.H.) told reporters after the meeting that I want Chinese authorities to know how this epidemic, which kills about 500 people each year, is affecting my small state. he said.

Yu points out that China received a large influx of opium from British merchants in the mid-19th century and was then forced to legalize it, causing a wave of debilitating addiction. He said he sympathized with the suffering.

“There is a strong desire among the Chinese people to help Americans and get them out of this crisis,” he said.

China, which has strict drug policies, says the United States and other top fentanyl consumers, all high-income countries, need to address their own failures to curb domestic demand. Despite less than 5% of the world’s population, in 2019 the United States consumed 14.5% of the world’s fentanyl, more than 60% of the world’s oxycodone, and more than 99% of the world’s hydrocodone, according to the International Narcotics Control Board. did.

Yu said U.S. deaths from opioids such as fentanyl have increased since China tightened regulations in 2019.

“This is worth considering,” he said.

Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said meeting demand is important and the U.S. could do more in terms of prevention, education and treatment, but there will always be demand as long as there is supply. Stated. -Director of a series about America’s opioid crisis.

The less supply we have, “the better off we are,” she said on “PBS NewsHour Weekend” last year.

Target the supply chain

Synthetic opioids such as fentanyl are widely used for legal purposes and are increasingly manufactured from very basic “dual-use” chemicals that are unlikely to be classified as controlled substances. Felbab-Brown said in a Zoom interview.

“Criminal groups are increasingly encountering a wider range of scheduled chemicals and are finding it extremely difficult to manufacture illicit substances such as fentanyl, synthetic opioids and methamphetamines from these unscheduled and widely used chemicals. “I’ve become good at it,” she said.

Under sanctions lifted in November, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration cannot share information with forensic laboratories about which drugs to monitor and the “constantly evolving” precursor chemicals used in U.S. drug manufacturing. remained in darkness. According to Dr. Hua Zhendong of the National Narcotics Institute, the institute, like the IFS, is part of the Ministry of Public Security and was similarly accredited.

“We need to know which chemicals are currently important in order to take action to constrain supply in China,” Hua said.

Fentanyl abuse is not common in China, but there have been problems with other drugs such as methamphetamine and ketamine. Fahrenheit said that in these cases, China has successfully targeted the supply side.

“I think we can also resolve the fentanyl precursor supply chain,” he said.

The Biden administration lifted sanctions, but China agreed to warn domestic companies not to trade in precursor chemicals. The White House announced that seizures of fentanyl shipments from China to the United States have decreased significantly after the Chinese government issued a similar notice in 2019.

There remains skepticism about whether U.S.-China cooperation on fentanyl will yield any worthwhile results. Republicans have criticized the Biden administration’s decision to lift sanctions as being too lenient on Beijing, and human rights activists have denounced it as a betrayal of the Uyghur people.

The Justice Department is also still seeking to prosecute a number of Chinese companies and individuals charged with fentanyl-related crimes last year. Although Chinese and U.S. law enforcement agencies have cooperated in several fentanyl-related cases in the past, Yu said the substances involved in the incident are not regulated by China, the United States, or the United Nations, and the United States has He said he had not provided any evidence. People were violating Chinese law.

“If there is a violation of Chinese law, China will take strict measures,” Yu said.

Janice Mackey Freyer reported from Beijing and Jennifer Jett from Hong Kong.