Reuters tracks the fentanyl supply chain

Fascinating story by Reuters on the Chinese-to-Mexico-to-US fentanyl supply chain: 

A CARDBOARD BOX half the size of a loaf of bread bore a shipping label declaring its contents: “Adapter.” It was delivered in October to a Reuters reporter in Mexico City.

There was no adapter inside that package. Instead, sealed in a metallic Mylar bag was a plastic jar containing a kilogram of 1-boc-4-piperidone, a pale powder that’s a core ingredient of fentanyl. It was enough to produce 750,000 tablets of the deadly drug.

A Reuters reporter had ordered the chemical six weeks earlier from a seller in China. The sales assistant, “Jenny,” used a photo of a Chinese actress as her screen avatar. The price was $440, payable in Bitcoin, delivery by air freight included.

“We can ship safely to Mexico,” Jenny had written in Spanish on the encrypted message platform Telegram in July 2023, when the reporter first inquired about the chemical. “No one knows what we ship.”

I don't think I have any good policy responses to this. China is so vast and so integrated in the chemical supply chain that someone, somewhere in China will be willing to make a fast buck by selling this stuff overseas. Good article, read the whole thing.