CHINA/DRUGS/FOREIGN POLICY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump is looking to President Xi Jinping to ‘do something’ about America’s opioid epidemic, for which he blames China…
Buying opioids from China, despite legal prohibitions, remains as easy as providing money and a shipping address. A drug bazaar thrives on Chinese websites, providing one-stop shopping for users around the world.
On Weiku.com, a website based in the eastern city of Hangzhou, close to 100 Chinese companies say they sell fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid. Vendors on one Beijing-based website, Mfrbee.com, sell chicken nuggets, basketball jerseys and carfentanil, the elephant tranquilizer that is 10,000 times as potent as morphine. A Shanghai-based chemical company, Shanghai Kaiwodun Biochemical, says it offers the designer drug U-47700 for $1,450 a pound…
Mr. Trump, who has accused China of being the main source of the ‘flood of cheap and deadly fentanyl’ into America, has pledged to raise the issue as a top priority when he meets Mr. Xi for talks on Thursday. In a news conference last week, Wei Xiaojun, a senior Chinese official, disputed Mr. Trump’s assertion, saying there was no evidence for it.”
-Sui-Lee Wee and Javier C. Hernandez, “Despite Trump’s Pleas, China’s Online Opioid Bazaar Is Booming,” The New York Times online, Nov. 8, 2017