Fentanyl Production Back to Business as Usual

Seven months after President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to revive a joint crackdown on illegal drug trafficking, fentanyl production reportedly is back to business as usual.

The Washington Post, citing three unnamed sources, reported traditional routes for shipping small but potent packages of the chemicals used in fentanyl production are still unhindered — and that they were resuming sales after making minor adjustments to evade scrutiny.

"Possibly in the future there is some impact, but it’s not a problem right now," one Hubei-based salesperson for a chemical company producing 1-Boc-4-AP — a fentanyl precursor — and the sedative xylazine, told the outlet.

"Like water flowing around rocks … if there is a demand there is a way," the source added.

According to the Post, one company's online advertisement for the chemical remain active — even boasting "safe and fast" delivery to the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

"As often seen with transnational criminal organizations, their business model adapts to law enforcement efforts and they will seek out new routes to circumvent law enforcement scrutiny," an unnamed senior Biden administration official told the outlet.

Seizures of precursor chemicals coming into the United States fell drastically in late 2023 because of targeted law enforcement, but seizures of finished fentanyl remain at record highs, "suggesting these chemical companies are identifying alternate routes," the official told the outlet.

China is the top global producer of the chemicals used to synthesize fentanyl, and much of the U.S. supply comes from illicit laboratories overseen by criminal groups in third-party countries, primarily Mexico, where cartels source Chinese chemicals and equipment, including pill presses, the Post reported.

One businessman, a former factory worker in China, told the outlet he’d never heard of fentanyl until he arrived in Mexico and found a ready market for precursor chemicals sourced from China and concealed in small postal packages.

"It's easy money," he told the Post.

After the Xi-Biden agreement and an industry-wide warning sent from Beijing, the businessman said his two main suppliers of 4-AP told him shipment had been put on hold, the outlet reported.

Shipments, however, began again just weeks later with just one change.

"This time the [customs] label said soap powder," he told the outlet. "Before there was no label," adding his supplier told him the situation in China was "more relaxed" now.

"Many of these companies are small in size and are able to resume operations quickly under different names. We encourage the PRC to take more deterrent enforcement action, such as public arrests," the unnamed senior U.S. official told the Post.