It is one of the strongest opioids in circulation, so deadly an amount smaller than a poppy seed can kill a person. Until July, when drug users in the US started overdosing on carfentanil, the substance was best known for knocking out moose and elephants — or as a chemical weapon.
Despite the dangers, Chinese vendors offer to sell carfentanil openly online, for worldwide export, no questions asked, an investigation by The Associated Press found.
Reporters identified 12 Chinese businesses that said they would export carfentanil to the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Belgium and Australia for as little as US$2,750 per 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 US alone. In China, the top global source of synthetic drugs, carfentanil is not a controlled substance. The US government is pressing China to blacklist it, but Beijing has yet to act.
“We can supply carfentanil, for sure,” a salesperson from Jilin Tely Import and Export Co wrote in broken English in an e-mail. “And it is one of our hot sales product.”
The reporters 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 US, UK, 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 is a weapon,” said Andrew Weber, former US assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs.
“Companies should not be just sending it to anybody,” he said.
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 agents for Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, 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 US to develop strategies to counter carfentanil’s potential use as a tool of war or terrorism, Weber said.
“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,” he added, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.
Later, dealers discovered that vast profits could be made by cutting fentanyl into illicit drugs. In the 2014 fiscal year, US authorities seized just 3.7kg of fentanyl. This fiscal year, through just mid-July, they seized 134.1kg, US Customs and Border Protection data show. Overdose rates have been skyrocketing.
The US Drug Enforcement Administration (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 US drug enforcement officials met in August and last month 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 US 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.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was