The synthetic opioid has led to overdose deaths across the country and a lot of it comes from China.
WASHINGTON ― Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) sees President Donald Trump’s Thursday meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping as an opportunity to address a key driver of the opioid epidemic. Portman encouraged the president to confront the Chinese leader about his country’s manufacturing of synthetic opioids like fentanyl.
Portman, in a letter to Trump, argued that the roots of the deadly crisis don’t just come from Mexican heroin traffickers and Big Pharma’s painkillers, but also from Chinese manufacturers shipping deadly synthetic opioids that have infiltrated the black market.
“U. S. law enforcement agencies report that the majority of fentanyl found in the illegal drug market is produced in China,” Portman wrote. “Law enforcement has detected efforts by drug traffickers to smuggle fentanyl across both the Northern border from Canada and the Southwest border from Mexico. However, increasingly fentanyl comes into the United States directly from China by express and traditional mail. Chemical testing of fentanyl seized by law enforcement from the United States Postal Service, as well as from private or express consignment shipping companies (UPS, DHL, FedEx) suggest that the fentanyl coming by direct shipments is deadly, with a purity of higher than 90 percent.
