China has made efforts to curb
flow of the opioid, vice-commissioner of anti-drugs body says
Liu Yuejin adds that the issue
is ‘totally irrelevant’ to trade talks
Published: 2:33pm, 3 Sep, 2019
China has hit back at US
President Donald Trump’s accusations that it is the main source of fentanyl
that has killed large numbers of Americans, saying that it has done its best to
curb the trafficking of the substance.
In Beijing on Tuesday, Liu
Yuejin, vice-commissioner of the Ministry of Public Security’s drugs control
commission, said China had made efforts to curb the supply of fentanyl,
including widening restrictions on the substance and cooperation with US law
enforcers. It added all fentanyl-related substances to a controlled list from
May, a measure intended to stop drug makers altering the chemical structure to
get around existing regulations.
US officials have accused
China of being the main source of illicit fentanyl and related substances that
are smuggled into the United States.
Last month, Trump accused his
Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, of failing to meet his promises and of not
doing enough to stop the flow of the potent synthetic opioid.
Citing statistics from the US
government, Liu said that of 229 cases of trafficking in which 537kg (1,184lbs)
of fentanyl-related substances were seized between last October and March, only
17 of them, involving 6kg of the substances, were found to have originated from
China.
“Since the ban on May 1, the
Chinese side has not found any criminal cases of trafficking fentanyl-related
substances,” Liu said.
Fentanyl has been among the
contentious issues between the two countries at a time when they have been
locked in a protracted trade war. US and Chinese officials reportedly held a
“working-level” meeting by telephone last Thursday during which Beijing said it
was making progress in restricting outbound fentanyl shipments as it tries to
persuade the White House to cut tariffs on Chinese goods.
But Liu said on Tuesday that
although China had been working closely with the US on curbing the illicit flow
of the substances, such efforts were “totally irrelevant” to the trade
negotiations and the two issues “should not be mixed together”.
“The US has not properly
solved the abuse of fentanyl in the United States, and never done a proper
investigation on the origin of fentanyl. Instead, it throws mud at us,” he
said.
“This is not the right way to
solve the problem, and it should not be mixed with the China-US trade
negotiations – it’s a totally unrelated issue.
“China has tightened the
control over fentanyl-related substances, but there are more and more people in
the US dying from [the drug]. This proves that China is not the main source of
fentanyl.”
Liu also denied speculation
that China had shipped fentanyl to Mexico as
a way of obscuring the drugs’ origin, saying that no such cases had been
reported by US, Chinese or Mexican authorities.
He added that China would
conduct a crackdown across 12 provinces in the next three months, stepping up
patrols and increasing checks at the country’s borders and of international
mailing.
The Trump administration has
railed against illegal imports of fentanyl from China as the US battles an
opioid crisis. There were more than 70,000 drug overdose deaths in the country
in 2017, with 68 per cent of them involving prescription or illicit opioids,
according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Trump tweeted on August 23
that Xi had not taken enough action to stop fentanyl being shipped from China
to the US, and ordered
carriers including American courier company FedEx, e-commerce giant Amazon,
delivery company United Parcel Service and the US Postal Service to “search and
refuse” fentanyl deliveries.
He has previously called
fentanyl a “horror drug”, and has entwined the issue with the trade war with
China. In December, Trump said that Xi had agreed during trade talks to take
action over fentanyl exports.
The Chinese foreign ministry
said last week that China had made “unprecedentedly intensive efforts” since
the changes in May, and urged the US government to improve its domestic
regulations to tackle the roots of the opioid crisis.
Mo Guanyao, a professor
specialising in law and enforcement on drugs at Yunnan Normal University, said
that the US accusation was groundless and China had imposed stricter controls
over fentanyl.
“The Chinese president
promised in his meeting with US President Donald Trump in December to make all
fentanyl [variants] controlled substances and that measure has already been in
place since May 1. What else does Trump want?” Mo said.
Additional reporting by Sarah
Zheng
This article appeared in the
South China Morning Post print edition as: Don’t blame us for rising drug
deaths, Beijing tells Trump
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