5 ms·

How Fentanyl Ingredients From China End Up in the U.S.

65 points by Thorondor 7y ago

rogerkirkness 7y ago
I feel like the whole "disrupter selling the imcumbent's people opiates" [1] is a recursive theme in statecraft. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_opium_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_opium_in_China
- roboys 7y ago
  Except China isn't forcing us to buy opium at gun point. Couple things that would be interesting to find out.. 1. What percentage of the company's total fentanyl pre-cursor sales are for legitimate medical purposes? 2. What percentage of total orders are fentanyl pre-cursor orders? Hard to assess scale without this information. *The people downvoting don't realize there are legitimate uses for fentanyl or what? It's a prescribed painkiller (fyi).
  - rogerkirkness 7y ago
    Methods change but does strategy?
  - tombh 7y ago
    The downvoters probably aren't aware that in fact Hong Kong's entire existence is due to a British war solely over China's refusal to trade opium.
  - ngold 7y ago
    England didn't force Chinese citizens to become drug addicts. That came from mass poverty. And the English were happy to get all that silver back for all the tea they had been buying. As for the miserable poverty England had, they were happy to have their own citizens drink themselves to death. And when the emperor said enough is enough, the british took a page out of Americas playboy with dealing with japan and trade. But went step further. And now we have the second largest economy pulling out victimhood, and Americas grand old party is using the same playbook. Get in power, play a victim, and crush hard working people under your heel.
    - billyhoffman 7y ago
      I think you have your dates wrong. The Chinese, after repeated requests through diplomatic means and appealing directly to Queen Victoria, seized all the opium the foreign merchants were bringing into Canton, destroyed it, and then refused to compensate them. This lead to the British Navy interceding. This happened in 1839, 13 years before US Admiral Perry opened Japan with gunship diplomacy. Don’t get me wrong, both of these actions are abhorrent. But mid 19th century Britain needed no guidebook on how to impose its will
neilv 7y ago
If this is indeed a major source for ingredients for illegal fentanyl reaching the US, why hasn't it been cut off at that point, through diplomatic channels between the US and China? Edit: This is an entirely sincere question, and seems an obviously relevant followup to the article, and important to US society plagued by opiate abuse. I realize, after downvoting, that my question could be read multiple ways, but I'll leave it as I initially asked it.
- roboys 7y ago
  "I asked about the two most popular fentanyl precursors, NPP and 4-ANPP, but I already knew that my timing was bad. In late 2017, China announced that it would schedule both of them, and Yuancheng immediately stopped selling them. (The law went into effect on February 1, 2018.)" It seems the major sources were banned, possibly need to schedule the other precursors that are less known if they don't have legitimate uses.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    Or it just gets pushed underground. Just because there was a lot of heat from publicly selling it, it still may be manufactured. Along with a price increase to make up for the lost volume. The whole point of precursors is to buy something that is multi-use or that one could do the paperwork for to import legitimately before diverting. We might be dealing with this for a while. The whole enforcement regime continues to be diverted around, so now we just have ultra-potent stuff that is basically unsafe to handle but the only choice.
    - Retric 7y ago
      At that point just import fentanyl. The precursors reduced legal risks on the manufacturing side. Take that away and they might as well just make the real drug.
      - Scoundreller 7y ago
        Sometimes the precursors are legal if you have the right paperwork (e.g. importing it for some industrial process). And, other time, the final product has a much higher molecular weight, so you get more bang for your smuggled kilo or m^3 bringing precursors.
refurb 7y ago
I used to work in chemistry a while back and the trend at the time was outsourcing chemical precursors from China. In the late 1990’s it was rare to buy from them, but by mid-2000’s most of our chemicals came from China. They literally sprouted a whole chemical industry pretty quickly. Send drug precursors just came along with that capability. Want to order a starting material for Lipitor? Sure! What about fentanyl itself? Sure! Just another chemical.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  The unusual thing is that it used to be India that was the source for generic drug company's APIs, with the basic bulk materials coming from China. Either China ramped up its domestic game and/or India itself outsourced to China.
  - refurb 7y ago
    My impression (limited it might be) is that a lot of drug companies went to India to manufacture their own drugs. As you mention, India already had some experience through their domestic generic drug industry. China built out their own outsourcing outfits somewhat on their own and then US manufacturing shifted to them after.
xkcd-sucks 7y ago
If you go down the chain far enough, almost anything is a "drug precursor" -- This is why a skinny trashy white person in possession of acetone and iodine can be charged with manufacturing methamphetamine. Fentanyls are pretty simple molecules to make, and banning the "precursors" mentioned here basically means one needs to choose a slightly different synthetic route, or make a slightly different drug. As for the Chinese company profiled in the article, it is literally the same as any other successful Chinese company in every aspect -- Except for the part where they explicitly discussed Fentanyl and demonstrated that they knew it was a common drug of abuse. But, without personal first hand exposure, they might well consider fentanyl to be the same as cannabis or ketamine, also widely reviled "drugs of abuse" in China. So, a charitable reading of this article just comes off as uncritical fearmongering. A cynical reading frames it as a "war on drugs" / "war on China" piece.
- cr0sh 7y ago
  > This is why a skinny trashy white person in possession of acetone and iodine can be charged with manufacturing methamphetamine. Has this actually happened? You need a few more ingredients in the chain before you get meth out the other end...I would hope a jury would know this.

65 points by Thorondor 7y ago

I feel like the whole "disrupter selling the imcumbent's people opiates" [1] is a recursive theme in statecraft. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_opium_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_opium_in_China

roboys 7y ago
Except China isn't forcing us to buy opium at gun point. Couple things that would be interesting to find out.. 1. What percentage of the company's total fentanyl pre-cursor sales are for legitimate medical purposes? 2. What percentage of total orders are fentanyl pre-cursor orders? Hard to assess scale without this information. *The people downvoting don't realize there are legitimate uses for fentanyl or what? It's a prescribed painkiller (fyi).
- rogerkirkness 7y ago
  Methods change but does strategy?
- tombh 7y ago
  The downvoters probably aren't aware that in fact Hong Kong's entire existence is due to a British war solely over China's refusal to trade opium.
- ngold 7y ago
  England didn't force Chinese citizens to become drug addicts. That came from mass poverty. And the English were happy to get all that silver back for all the tea they had been buying. As for the miserable poverty England had, they were happy to have their own citizens drink themselves to death. And when the emperor said enough is enough, the british took a page out of Americas playboy with dealing with japan and trade. But went step further. And now we have the second largest economy pulling out victimhood, and Americas grand old party is using the same playbook. Get in power, play a victim, and crush hard working people under your heel.
  - billyhoffman 7y ago
    I think you have your dates wrong. The Chinese, after repeated requests through diplomatic means and appealing directly to Queen Victoria, seized all the opium the foreign merchants were bringing into Canton, destroyed it, and then refused to compensate them. This lead to the British Navy interceding. This happened in 1839, 13 years before US Admiral Perry opened Japan with gunship diplomacy. Don’t get me wrong, both of these actions are abhorrent. But mid 19th century Britain needed no guidebook on how to impose its will

neilv 7y ago

If this is indeed a major source for ingredients for illegal fentanyl reaching the US, why hasn't it been cut off at that point, through diplomatic channels between the US and China? Edit: This is an entirely sincere question, and seems an obviously relevant followup to the article, and important to US society plagued by opiate abuse. I realize, after downvoting, that my question could be read multiple ways, but I'll leave it as I initially asked it.

roboys 7y ago
"I asked about the two most popular fentanyl precursors, NPP and 4-ANPP, but I already knew that my timing was bad. In late 2017, China announced that it would schedule both of them, and Yuancheng immediately stopped selling them. (The law went into effect on February 1, 2018.)" It seems the major sources were banned, possibly need to schedule the other precursors that are less known if they don't have legitimate uses.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Or it just gets pushed underground. Just because there was a lot of heat from publicly selling it, it still may be manufactured. Along with a price increase to make up for the lost volume. The whole point of precursors is to buy something that is multi-use or that one could do the paperwork for to import legitimately before diverting. We might be dealing with this for a while. The whole enforcement regime continues to be diverted around, so now we just have ultra-potent stuff that is basically unsafe to handle but the only choice.
  - Retric 7y ago
    At that point just import fentanyl. The precursors reduced legal risks on the manufacturing side. Take that away and they might as well just make the real drug.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      Sometimes the precursors are legal if you have the right paperwork (e.g. importing it for some industrial process). And, other time, the final product has a much higher molecular weight, so you get more bang for your smuggled kilo or m^3 bringing precursors.

refurb 7y ago

I used to work in chemistry a while back and the trend at the time was outsourcing chemical precursors from China. In the late 1990’s it was rare to buy from them, but by mid-2000’s most of our chemicals came from China. They literally sprouted a whole chemical industry pretty quickly. Send drug precursors just came along with that capability. Want to order a starting material for Lipitor? Sure! What about fentanyl itself? Sure! Just another chemical.

Scoundreller 7y ago
The unusual thing is that it used to be India that was the source for generic drug company's APIs, with the basic bulk materials coming from China. Either China ramped up its domestic game and/or India itself outsourced to China.
- refurb 7y ago
  My impression (limited it might be) is that a lot of drug companies went to India to manufacture their own drugs. As you mention, India already had some experience through their domestic generic drug industry. China built out their own outsourcing outfits somewhat on their own and then US manufacturing shifted to them after.

xkcd-sucks 7y ago

If you go down the chain far enough, almost anything is a "drug precursor" -- This is why a skinny trashy white person in possession of acetone and iodine can be charged with manufacturing methamphetamine. Fentanyls are pretty simple molecules to make, and banning the "precursors" mentioned here basically means one needs to choose a slightly different synthetic route, or make a slightly different drug. As for the Chinese company profiled in the article, it is literally the same as any other successful Chinese company in every aspect -- Except for the part where they explicitly discussed Fentanyl and demonstrated that they knew it was a common drug of abuse. But, without personal first hand exposure, they might well consider fentanyl to be the same as cannabis or ketamine, also widely reviled "drugs of abuse" in China. So, a charitable reading of this article just comes off as uncritical fearmongering. A cynical reading frames it as a "war on drugs" / "war on China" piece.

cr0sh 7y ago
> This is why a skinny trashy white person in possession of acetone and iodine can be charged with manufacturing methamphetamine. Has this actually happened? You need a few more ingredients in the chain before you get meth out the other end...I would hope a jury would know this.