A delegation including officials from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, State and Treasury will meet to discuss ways to eliminate shipments of Chinese chemicals used to make fentanyl — called precursors — to drug cartels abroad, including tracking improvements. And labeling.
The meeting represents a step forward in a process that began in November, when Beijing – in a show of good faith – opened lines of communication with the United States on combating drug trafficking after years of relative silence, and issued warnings to Chinese chemical makers.
A senior White House official said on Sunday: “This is a truly critical and pivotal moment for our direct committee’s implementation of this issue.” “It is a platform for continuous coordination to support concrete enforcement actions aimed at confronting the growing threat of synthetic drugs,” the official said.
Beijing banned the sale of fentanyl in 2019, effectively ending shipments of the drug directly to the United States from Chinese suppliers. However, Chinese companies remain among the largest manufacturers of fentanyl precursors. These chemicals are still sold to third place–Party markets, including Mexico, where they are used to manufacture synthetic drugs smuggled into the United States.
The role of Chinese precursors has been contentious between officials in Beijing and Washington. Some US lawmakers have blamed Beijing for the deaths of nearly 100,000 people annually in the United States due to fentanyl abuse. In contrast, officials in Beijing blamed the United States for its failure to control the epidemic at home.
“The United States itself is the root cause of its drug problems,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in response. US government sanctions on Chinese precursor manufacturers in April 2023. “It is the importer’s duty to prevent such chemicals from falling into the hands of illicit drug makers,” he said.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
Despite this friction, a senior administration official said on Sunday that the resumption of communications since November had already led to significant breakthroughs in disrupting the supply of fentanyl precursors to the United States. The official claimed A decrease in seizures as evidence of diminished supply.
“We have information that the People's Republic of China began taking action against Chinese suppliers of synthetic drugs and chemical precursors around the time of the summit. In the following month, we saw companies shut down and international accounts blocked,” the official said, adding that they believe this is the first such action. A law of its kind that Beijing has adopted since 2017.
The official also said that Beijing provided 145 medicines in November–The relevant incidents were added to the International Narcotics Control Board's database — a tool used to share information internationally about suspected trafficking activities — marking the first time since 2017 that the Chinese government has done so.
In November, Beijing also issued a public notice, warning domestic producers of more than 50 precursors that they faced potential legal action for sending the chemicals abroad. They also warned of the possibility of a “entrapment” by foreign authorities, and said exporters should be careful when shipping goods to countries including the United States and Mexico.
The senior administration official compared the notice on precursors to a similar notice issued in 2019, which was followed by a near complete decline in fentanyl seizures shipped directly from China to the United States.
“We expect that we will start seeing the same thing happen in the upstream chemicals industry as well,” the official said. The official added that Beijing is also in discussions with Mexico on this issue.
The resumption of counter-narcotics cooperation comes amid a relative improvement in relations between the United States and China, following a period of intense friction marked by claims about the origin of the coronavirus, impending clashes between ships and warplanes in the South China Sea, and a dispute over a Chinese spy balloon. Which crossed the United States early last year. In December, senior military officials in both countries finally reopened key lines of communication.
