China bans opioid fueling surge of American overdose deaths

"Fentanyl-related compounds represent a significant and deadly component of the current opioid crisis," said U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg, who was among officials working with Chinese counterparts to get the change.

A large animal tranquilizer, carfentanil burst into the North American drug supply last summer, causing hundreds of unsuspecting users to overdose. Since then, deaths from carfentanil have been reported in Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton.

Carfentanil is 100 times stronger than fentanyl, which itself is 30-50 times more powerful than heroin. An amount of carfentanil smaller than a poppy seed absorbed through the skin or inhaled can cause death.

The rapid rise of extremely dangerous synthetic opioids like carfentanil and fentanyl are traced to China’s large chemical and pharmaceutical industries, according to a report released earlier this month by the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission. The labs produce vast quantities of the synthetic opioid and its analogues for export with little regulatory oversight, the report says.

A recent Dayton Daily News investigation showed how an increasing number of users purchase opioids manufactured in China through online black markets. Helped by laws governing shipping information, the drugs ship virtually unchecked directly to mail boxes in the Miami Valley.

But most of the Chinese product comes to Ohio through long established channels: Mexican drug cartels, authorities say. The cartels buy the drugs in bulk and smuggle it north, often cutting it along the way into heroin or pressing it into tablets looking like common prescription pain pills.

Though Beijing has said U.S. assertions that China is the top source of synthetic opioids lack evidence, the countries deepened cooperation as the U.S. opioid epidemic intensified. China already regulates fentanyl and 18 related compounds, even though they are not widely abused domestically.

In October, an Associated Press investigation identified 12 Chinese companies willing to export carfentanil around the world for a few thousand dollars a kilogram (2.2 pounds), no questions asked. That same month China began evaluating whether to ban carfentanil and the three other drugs. Usually, the process can take nine months. This time, it took just four.

Researched for years as a chemical weapon, carfentanil – or a near analogue – was used by Russian forces to subdue Chechen separatists who took about 800 people hostage at a Moscow theater in 2002. More than 120 of the hostages died. Many survivors were left with chronic health problems.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration called China's move a potential "game-changer" that is likely to have a big impact in the U.S., where opioid demand has driven the proliferation of a new class of deadly drugs made by nimble chemists to stay one step ahead of new rules like this one. After China controlled 116 synthetic drugs in October 2015, seizures in the United States of compounds on that list plunged.

"It's a substantial step in the fight against opioids here in the United States," said Russell Baer, a DEA special agent in Washington. "We're persuaded it will have a definite impact."

Since 2016, China has arrested dozens of synthetic drug exporters, destroyed eight illegal labs and seized around 2 tons of new psychoactive substances, according to the Office of the National Narcotics Control Committee.

Illicitly manufactured synthetic opioids took 5,544 American lives in 2014 and increased a stunning 72.2 percent in 2015 when 9,580 deaths were reported, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Deaths from all opioids numbered 33,091 in 2015, the last year for which complete national data are available.

State records show 1,155 Ohioans died with fentanyl in their systems in 2015, including 185 in Montgomery County. With 77 autopsies from 2016 yet to be finalized and counted, the Montgomery County coroner had already ruled 181 deaths related to fentanyl or analogues.

The Associated Press contributed to this report