This week, China made good on a promise to President Trump and announced that it would consider fentanyl-like drugs as controlled substances. Although China had already banned various forms of the drug, the latest policy shift would treat all “fentanyl-related substances” as illegal which, in theory, would make them harder to export.
For Trump, who has long called for such a policy shift from Beijing as part of his attempt to address the opioid crisis in the U.S., the ban was heralded as a win. Although good for the U.S., it would not have been possible without close, working relationships with China despite ongoing trade and security disputes.
In explaining the new laws, Liu Yuejin, the vice commissioner of the National Narcotics Control Commission, made clear that despite the policy change, China continued to view the widespread opioid addiction in the U.S. as a homegrown problem. As he put it, “We believe that the United States is the main cause of the problem of fentanyl in the United States.” Among the reasons for this cited by Liu is what he described as a culture of addiction.
These modern arguments about addiction, imported drugs, and on whose shoulders the blame for overdose deaths rests, mirror conversations from more than a century ago.
Then, it was China that (rightly) accused the West of foisting poisonous opium on the Chinese people through the opium trade, and the West placed the blame for addiction on China, justifying its argument, in part, by pointing to domestic poppy production and a “culture of addiction.”
Eventually, under the leadership of President Theodore Roosevelt, the Shanghai Opium Commission convened in February 1909 and laid the framework for modern international narcotics regulations. Key to the success of that commission and subsequent regulation was the recognition that the production and trade of narcotics perpetuated by one government brought serious harm for the people of another.
In 2019, the tables are turned, and it is now the West that blames China for exporting a poison and China that says it is a domestic problem. The need for collaboration between governments to attempt to regulate an addictive substance and its impact elsewhere is just as clear.
Then as now, reaching international agreements on substance control (regardless of the merits of the particular policy adopted), does not necessitate that both sides see eye-to-eye on the problem, let alone anything else, but that countries are willing to negotiate and work together.
Of course, addiction and who profits from it are far more complex than simply laying the blame at the feet of a foreign power. Indeed, as Trump champions his victory of achieving a shift in China’s policy, a case against the wealthy American Sackler family which built its fortune, in part, on selling OxyCotin demonstrates there is still plenty of work to be done in the U.S. too.
Nevertheless, Trump was right to cite the international flow of fentanyl as a key part of the problem. He was also right to call on China to take responsibility to change its laws to address the manufacture and export of fentanyl and similar drugs. In doing so and finding success in Beijing, Trump highlighted the importance of good, working relations, even with a country claimed as an adversary. And with fentanyl, those open diplomatic channels will likely save the lives of individuals in the U.S. far removed from the politics of international diplomacy.
