US applauds China’s action on opioid

US drug enforcement officials are praising China’s ban of the opioid car fen ta nil, Four which types is 10,000 of synthetic times op io ids, as potentincluding as morphine an and elephant beis sometimes tranquilizer, used as a are tranquilizerto added tranquilizer for to elephants, China’ s list and of as related synthetic substances, op io ids. authorities China announced crackdown on on a new Thursday generation that car fen ta nil of illegal narcotics. and its cousins fur anylf en tanyl, Starting March ac rylf en tanyl1,fou rand fe ntanyl- will vale ry l based fe ntanyl medications will be added be toits put list on of the controlled List of Non pharmaceuticalsubstances effective March Narcotic 1. Drugs Fe ntanyl an disused Psychotropic legitimate ly Drugs legitimate ly as an Under anesthetic Control, hospitals the hospitals total or for number long-term of pain controlled management, substances such to as 134, in the the Ministry form of prescription of Public Security patches said for late-on stage Thursday. cancer patients, according Fe ntanyl to isHua a sy nth etic Zh en dong, opioid deputy that director is about of the 10,000 Ministry times Ministry of Public more powerful Security’ s drug than morphine testing laboratory. and is identified as It anew drew psycho active wide public substance, attention after Prince, the US musician, died in April a this home of an accidental over-dose off entanyl. China had emerged as an important source country for opioids like carfentanil. It is not a controlled substance there, and is manufactured legally and sold openly. Online retailers have sol ditto customers in the US. Dealers cut fentanyl into heroin and other drugs to boost profit margins. Opioid abuse has become a major US problem. Dur-ing 2015, drug overdoses accounted for 52,404 US deaths, including 33,091(63.1 percent) that involved an opioid, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. China’ s action is “tremen-dous ly positive” and it “will have a practical and real positive impact in saving American lives ”, Russell Baer of the US Drug Enforcement Administration( DE A) wrote in an email to China Daily.He said the move “demon-strates China’s commitment to help the United States in combating its problems with opioid addiction and address-ing America’s public health crisis”.’ “DEA welcomes addition-al controls of other deadly fentanyl-related compounds along with fentanyl precur-sors,” Baer said.He noted that Americans make up only 5 percent of the world’s population yet “we use 25 percent of the world’s drugs and the majority of the world’s supply of opioid drugs”. Yu Haibin, director of the Office of the National Nar-cotics Control Committee, told The Associated Press that China’s ban showed its “attitude as a responsible big country” and that “it will be a strong deterrent”. Baer said that the carfen-tanil that has been seized in multiple US states is believed to be arriving from foreign sources via illicit networks and dark-web purchases .“The presence of car fen t-ani lin illicit US drug markets is cause for concern as the relative strength of this drug has led to an increase in over-doses and overdose-related deaths, even among longtime heroin users ,” he said .“Synthetic s or new psy-choactive substances are the number one long-term drug threat: they area favorite of drug traffickers worldwide because they are cheap and relatively easy to make, and can be produced anywhere ,” said Baer.Bob Top miller is the chief of toxicology for the Hamil-ton County( Ohio) Coroner’ s office, which covers the Cin-cinnati metropolitan area. “It’s become a big deal in this area. We had a big wave of overdoses last August ,” Top miller said in an inter-view. “It’s difficult for us to keep up .”