US indicts Chinese fentanyl producers

The US Justice Department announced Tuesday the indictment of two Chinese producers of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that causes a rising share of the country’s 60,000-plus annual overdose deaths.

But questions remained over whether the Trump administration will go after the US makers and distributors of legal opioids that have fuelled the nation’s addiction crisis.

Early Tuesday President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Congressman Tom Marino, withdrew after news reports tied him to legislation that protected prescription drug distributors from prosecution for indiscriminately dumping hundreds of millions of tablets of highly addictive opioids like Oxycodone into the US market.

“Rep. Tom Marino has informed me that he is withdrawing his name from consideration as drug czar. Tom is a fine man and a great Congressman!” Trump tweeted.

Legal and illegal synthetic opioids were behind most of the 64,000 drug overdose deaths across the country in 2016, a record level expected to further rise this year.

US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Tuesday that 20,000 of those deaths resulted from fentanyl that is cheap to manufacture and is up to 50 times more potent than heroin.

With the supply of prescription opioids on the market cut back in the past two years, addicts have turned to the cheapest alternative, fentanyl or heroin cut with fentanyl.

Two Chinese, Zhang Jian and Yan Xiaobing, were indicted for supplying two separate distribution networks with fentanyl, one of them also operating in Canada.

They said Yan operated at least two chemical plants in China able to produce fentanyl by the ton.

US officials alleged Zhang had four fentanyl-producing laboratories and sold the drug over the Internet.

US officials would not say if the two traffickers had been arrested or their plants shut by the Chinese authorities.