Trump misreads, claims wrong drug concession from China

SHANGHAI – President Donald Trump is claiming victory in getting China to designate fentanyl a controlled substance, but China took that step against the deadly opioid years ago.

What’s on the table is a far more sweeping shift in the way China regulates synthetic opioids. The question is how China will follow through on its words.

Its stated intention is to expand controls on drugs that mimic fentanyl.

Trump, in describing his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in Argentina, said: “What he will be doing to fentanyl could be a game changer for the United States – and what fentanyl is doing to our country in terms of killing people. Because he’s agreed to put it at the highest level of crime in his country.”

The White House said in a statement: “Very importantly, President Xi, in a wonderful humanitarian gesture, has agreed to designate Fentanyl as a Controlled Substance, meaning that people selling Fentanyl to the United States will be subject to China’s maximum penalty under the law.”

That’s a misreading of what China agreed to do, at least as far as Chinese authorities are concerned.

Fentanyl has been a controlled substance in China for years, according to Chinese regulators. As well, China has already put more than 25 variants of fentanyl on its list of controlled substances, China’s foreign ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, said last week.

Now, “China has decided to list all the fentanyl-like substances as controlled substances and start working to adjust related regulations,” says China’s foreign ministry.

Doing so could help block China’s opioid merchants from skirting the law by inventing new chemical variants of fentanyl faster than regulators can declare them illegal.

The standard approach of regulating drugs one by one has failed to control the proliferation of new and deadly synthetic opioids in the United States.

In February, the U.S. said that for the next two years, all new chemical versions of fentanyl that weren’t already regulated would be classified as illegal controlled substances. U.S. officials had been urging China to do something similar.

So far there’s no timeline for implementation of the policy.