https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/world/asia/china-bans-fentanyl-trump.html
By Steven Lee Myers
China’s export of the drug, a family of synthetic opioids blamed for tens of thousands of overdoses in the United States, has long been a source of tension in relations and has, more recently, become tangled up in the continuing trade war.
China already treats more than two dozen variants of fentanyl and its precursors as controlled substances, thus strictly regulating their production and distribution, but it has banned those variants only after reviewing them case by case, a process that can be lengthy.
The latest step would expand restrictions to all “fentanyl-related substances,” effective May 1. That could plug gaps that, experts and American officials have said, allowed manufacturers in China to make novel variations of the drug that were not technically illegal.
In December, Mr. Trump announced a promise Mr. Xi made to him at the Group of 20 meeting in Buenos Aires, saying then that the step formalized on Monday could be a “game changer.” He had previously taken to Twitter earlier to excoriate China over the issue, accusing it of “killing our children and destroying our country.”
This is good.
By Steven Lee Myers
- April 1, 2019
China’s export of the drug, a family of synthetic opioids blamed for tens of thousands of overdoses in the United States, has long been a source of tension in relations and has, more recently, become tangled up in the continuing trade war.
China already treats more than two dozen variants of fentanyl and its precursors as controlled substances, thus strictly regulating their production and distribution, but it has banned those variants only after reviewing them case by case, a process that can be lengthy.
The latest step would expand restrictions to all “fentanyl-related substances,” effective May 1. That could plug gaps that, experts and American officials have said, allowed manufacturers in China to make novel variations of the drug that were not technically illegal.
In December, Mr. Trump announced a promise Mr. Xi made to him at the Group of 20 meeting in Buenos Aires, saying then that the step formalized on Monday could be a “game changer.” He had previously taken to Twitter earlier to excoriate China over the issue, accusing it of “killing our children and destroying our country.”
This is good.
