At the end of May, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned multiple entities and individuals in China and Mexico for selling equipment related to fentanyl. China’s Ministry of Commerce said today that the United States is ignoring the facts, and China firmly opposes this.
The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement on May 30 that it had imposed sanctions on seven entities and six people in China, and one company and three people in Mexico, accusing them of facilitating the production of counterfeit, fentanyl-laced drugs. pill. The United States is trying to stem the flow of the deadly drug into the United States.
According to the website of the Ministry of Commerce of China, the person in charge of the Americas and Oceania Department responded to this matter, saying that China has always strictly enforced drug control and tried its best to help the United States deal with the fentanyl problem in a humanitarian spirit.
He said that the United States ignored the facts and imposed sanctions on Chinese entities and individuals on the grounds that the tablet presses and mold equipment sold to the United States and Mexico could be used to manufacture fentanyl, in an attempt to confuse the public, mislead the public, and shift its own governance. Ineffective responsibility. China firmly opposes this and will firmly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies and individuals.
Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, and is increasingly used in combination with other illicit drugs, often deadly. In the U.S., overdose deaths involving the synthetic opioid fentanyl more than tripled from 2016 to 2021, according to a report released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The death toll exceeded 100,000.
A May article in the journal Foreign Affairs pointed out that most of the world’s raw materials for fentanyl and precursor chemicals come from China and Mexico. In 2015, Washington pushed Beijing to strengthen control over fentanyl-related drugs, and the two countries cooperated in anti-narcotics; after 2019, China’s anti-narcotics operations have decreased, and it seems that it has not done anything to prevent pre-chemicals from entering Mexico.
This article pointed out that the relationship between the United States and China is not good, and China naturally has no willingness to cooperate with the United States. Beijing views drug cooperation as part of a geostrategic relationship, but Washington seeks to decouple the issue from geopolitics.
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