Fentanyl (Photo : Getty Images)
On Tuesday, a senior U.S. official applauded the Chinese government’s commitment to combating the widening market of synthetic drugs, specifically the fentanyl trade in China.
Fentanyl, a powerful prescription painkiller, is highly addictive and is currently one of the synthetic drugs ravaging the Americans. People have been in the hunt for illegal versions of the drug.
Last year, Pop star Prince died due to fentanyl overdose.
China remains a major manufacturer and supplier of illegal fentanyl and the precursor chemicals for the drug.
Nevertheless, Beijing had been referred to by senior Washington drugs official as "a tremendously effective partner" in efforts to halt the trade.
In a conference call with reporters, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Luis Arreaga of the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs highlighted Beijing’s actions to regulate "more than 120 analogue and other psychoactive substances" in the past two years.
"China has been a tremendously effective partner with the United States and China’s commitment has been shown with some very specific steps to control their domestic production of chemicals that can be used for illicit drugs," Arreaga said.
Around 2.6 million Americans are addicted to prescription opioid painkillers such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, or on heroin and fentanyl.
"Just to give you an idea of how horrific the problem is in the United States, in 2015 alone prescription and illicit opioids including fentanyl claimed the lives of over 33,000 Americans," the U.S. drug official said.
Successes were being attained, particularly in efforts to regulate the export of precursor chemicals, despite the “inadequate” global controls to restrict the production and distribution of illegal drugs, Arreaga added.
The United Nation’s top drugs body took action earlier this month to clear out two of the most common precursors of illicit fentanyl.
According to the Chinese government, the spike in accounts of synthetic drug abuse and production is considered as the major contributor to the growth of the country’s severe drug problem.
China National Narcotics Control Commission Vice Director Liu Yuejin said that Chinese confiscation of methamphetamine, ketamine and other synthetic drugs increased by 106 percent year-on-year in 2016.
Chinese drug manufacturers make their products readily available for purchase online. They persistently tweak the drug formula so as to be ahead of the laws that prohibit the products based on their chemical components.
The Chinese government is exerting effort to end the fentanyl trade in China.
