I used to work in chemistry a while back and the trend at the time was outsourcing chemical precursors from China. In the late 1990’s it was rare to buy from them, but by mid-2000’s most of our chemicals came from China. They literally sprouted a whole chemical industry pretty quickly.<p>Send drug precursors just came along with that capability. Want to order a starting material for Lipitor? Sure! What about fentanyl itself? Sure! Just another chemical.
I feel like the whole "disrupter selling the imcumbent's people opiates" [1] is a recursive theme in statecraft.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_opium_in_China" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_opium_in_China</a>
If you go down the chain far enough, almost anything is a "drug precursor" -- This is why a skinny trashy white person in possession of acetone and iodine can be charged with manufacturing methamphetamine.<p>Fentanyls are pretty simple molecules to make, and banning the "precursors" mentioned here basically means one needs to choose a slightly different synthetic route, or make a slightly different drug.<p>As for the Chinese company profiled in the article, it is literally the same as any other successful Chinese company in every aspect -- Except for the part where they explicitly discussed Fentanyl and demonstrated that they knew it was a common drug of abuse. But, without personal first hand exposure, they might well consider fentanyl to be the same as cannabis or ketamine, also widely reviled "drugs of abuse" in China.<p>So, a charitable reading of this article just comes off as uncritical fearmongering. A cynical reading frames it as a "war on drugs" / "war on China" piece.
If this is indeed a major source for ingredients for illegal fentanyl reaching the US, why hasn't it been cut off at that point, through diplomatic channels between the US and China?<p>Edit: This is an entirely sincere question, and seems an obviously relevant followup to the article, and important to US society plagued by opiate abuse. I realize, after downvoting, that my question could be read multiple ways, but I'll leave it as I initially asked it.