Fentanyl makes its way from Chinese labs to Baltimore streets, with deadly consequences

In a laboratory somewhere in China, a chemist is producing the fentanyl that will kill an opioid user in Maryland.

Within China’s vast drug industry, which produces much of the global supply of pharmaceutical ingredients, laboratories are taking advantage of cheap labor and lax oversight from Beijing to churn out new versions of the cheap, powerful and often deadly synthetic opioid faster than U.S. authorities can identify, classify and ban them.

From China — the largest producer of fentanyl worldwide — the drug is sent daily by plane or ship to Mexico, where traffickers and truckers push it along well-worn paths of illicit narcotics north to the United States. In Baltimore and other cities, well-established gangs push the powder and pills to consumers.

This much is known by U.S. authorities. They’re intercepting increasing amounts of fentanyl. But they’ve been unable to make much of a dent in the trade.

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