There - behind the Great Chinese drug wall
XNUMXs epidemic
People over the age of 35-40 remember very well the real epidemic of drug poisoning from the fentanyl group, which was observed in the XNUMXs. Since fentanyls were supplied mainly from China, they were collectively referred to as "white Chinese", which now seems to have been transferred to the so-called precursors.
It would seem that the decline in the supply of fentanyl has removed the problem of this kind of drug sabotage. But that was not the case: China is finding more and more new types of psychoactive substances that are little known to Russian law enforcement agencies, and therefore can be sold almost freely.
Dashing nineties and the Soviet legacy
Let's start with a necessary historical digression.
The phrase "white Chinese" usually refers to the strongest of the fentanyl group of drugs - trimethylfentanyl. Although often under this name they unite the entire group of fentanyl.
History The emergence of this drug dates back to the times when the Russian and the Chinese, as it was sung in the song, were brothers forever. With an incomprehensible purpose, the USSR tried to synthesize this drug, of course, only for medical purposes. But, apparently, the chemists were a little frightened of the deadly effect: an excess of a few grains led to death.
Then the Soviet chemical industry did not find anything better than to transfer technology to China. The Chinese brought the formula to mind, filling up almost the whole world with trimethylfentanyl as a result. In the nineties, the situation returned to the countries of the already collapsed USSR like a boomerang: China began to supply it to Russia and Kazakhstan, from where it spread across one sixth of the land.
A holy place is never empty
The popularity of the "white Chinese" began to decline and almost disappeared due to numerous cases of fatal overdose. In the XNUMXs, the deadly potion almost disappeared from the Russian market, especially since the relevant authorities made titanic efforts to cover all retail outlets, raided nightclubs, etc.
But in the same tenths, China began to flood Russia with other synthetic drugs, which in everyday life received the names "salts" and "spices". At first, all this was sold under the guise of flavorings and bath mixtures (hence the name "salts"). Then the State Drug Control Service added supposedly harmless and legal substances to the list of drugs.
But, again, it didn't end there. The last high-profile precedent for the smuggling of Chinese psychoactive substances into Russia occurred in 2022. The verdict against a resident of Vyborg for smuggling was passed in December, right before the New Year.
The Russian ordered a parcel from China with 500 grams of spice mix. The customs office checked this parcel and at the address it was supposed to arrive, identified the customer, during a search in his garage they found another 4 kg of ready-made drugs. The recipient of the smuggling was sentenced to 10 years in a strict regime.
Their morals
Given the common border, China supplies Russia not only with drugs and raw materials for their manufacture, but also with precursors used by underground chemists as auxiliary substances. These can be both banal acetic anhydride, red phosphorus and crystalline iodine, as well as substances less common on the Russian black market.
In particular, in mid-2022, 848 kg of precursors banned in Russia for free circulation arrived in Vladivostok from China. The cargo arrived under forged documents at the address of the seaside company. It was written in the documents that this is a substance used in the chemical industry.
However, the customs did not believe such a silly letter, because the precursors were transported in plastic barrels, which is not typical for official deliveries of chemicals. Precursors are imported into Russia only with the permission of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In this case, of course, there was no permission.
Russia and the CIS countries are not the only victims of Chinese drug traffickers. True, Western countries reacted more quickly to the influx of drugs from China. In the United States, the latest wave of poisonings with Chinese synthetics was in 2016, when spices appeared in New York, previously unknown to anti-trafficking authorities.
Pushers called this drug "AK-47". The picture was complicated by the fact that those who used it fell into a stupor and practically did not understand anything. It turned out that the spice was based on the drug AB-FUBINACA from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
Play on nerves
A leak from the company of the formula of the drug under unclear circumstances led to the fact that Chinese underground chemists modified it and added additional ingredients to the composition of the spice. As a result, those who used it had the strongest changes in the nervous system.
In 2022, fentanyl was found to be supplied in the US. Despite the fact that there were fewer cases of mass poisoning than in the aforementioned 2016, the danger was assessed by federal drug enforcement agents as colossal. The number of lethal doses of fentanyl was such that every American could be killed.
As it turned out, the drug was supplied from Mexico, but there in the laboratories it was made from Chinese raw materials. Due to the lack of a common border with China, fentanyl of Chinese origin appeared in America and Europe much later than in Russia, about ten years ago.
At the same time, apparently due to the fact that Western civilization was not very ready for such contact with Chinese criminals (unlike the border regions of Russia and Kazakhstan, which have learned since Soviet times what the southeastern neighbor is), for example, in US fentanyl has caused a real disaster.
It has supplanted opioid drugs of plant origin (heroin, etc.). In the CIS countries, fentanyl in the nineties and zero had competition with more traditional poppy straw drugs (especially in rural areas and most of all in the south) and heroin. Therefore, the situation on the western continent now does not even repeat the recent Russian situation, but is much worse.
If Russia is supplied mainly with salts and spices, then fentanyls are supplied to the USA and Canada, first of all, the most powerful of them - the "white Chinese". The only similarity of the situation is that American hucksters also like to mix opioids with stimulants, that Russia has already gone through the period of free sale of spices. But the result is far worse.
During the presidency of Donald Trump and the Republicans, the United States threatened China with further sanctions if it did not introduce tighter regulation of the circulation and production of fentanyl and related precursors. China has introduced measures, but, according to Washington, they are insufficient. The flow of fentanyl to the US has already started from Mexico.
They produced the drug from Chinese raw materials with the use of their precursors for a chemical reaction, the circulation of which there is still not limited. Tension in relations between the US and China has led official Beijing to ignore the White House's demands to tighten the circulation of substances required to make a "white Chinese". And this is with the complete silence of the Mexican authorities.
Caution: pharmacist
It should be noted that China's pharmaceutical industry is the world's largest exporter of precursors. While China has strict laws regarding drug trafficking and use, this does not prevent the successful existence of companies that produce (sometimes without official permission) chemicals used to manufacture a variety of psychoactive substances.
Most of them are exported - it is dangerous to trade drugs in China itself. The manufacture and export of fentanyl in China has been banned since 2019, but the export of raw materials and precursors to Mexico is not prohibited. The same applies to the production of methamphetamine: in China it is a criminal offense, but the local mafia has opened its production in Mexico and Southeast Asia.
There is no ban on the supply of precursors. For some time, Chinese methamphetamine was supplied to Australia, but now, under the threat of sanctions, China is forced to at least imitate cooperation with its police and tighten the laws for its production and transportation.
The Chinese drug control still somehow continues to cooperate with Australia, but it stopped transmitting information to the United States about the supply of fentanyl and methamphetamine through Mexico, apparently in retaliation for the sanctions. The American police themselves are already inclined to admit that with such pressure on China, retaliatory measures to control the supply of drugs, even indirect ones, will not be achieved in the United States.
At the same time, China is cooperating more actively with neighboring Asian countries in this direction, although it still avoids taking part in the liquidation and detention of triads abroad. This is explained by the fact that the triads in the countries of Southeast Asia largely promote Chinese economic interests in them.
Instead of PS
Plans and prospects
Next in line, obviously, in addition to Mexico, will be India, Nigeria and South Africa, where Chinese precursors are actively sent. This is all the more strange since India and South Africa are China's BRICS partners, as is Russia.
So far, China only promises that it will cut off supplies to friendly countries. But it is still unclear when the matter will move from promises to real actions.
- Mikhail Vikentiev, Pyotr Nenarokov
- sputniknews.com, pikabu.ru
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