WASHINGTON - Three Chinese citizens have been charged with distributing fentanyl in the United States, where addiction spurred by the synthetic opioid drug has ravaged communities, US prosecutors announced Tuesday.
Deyao Chen, Guichun Chen and Liangtu Pan are accused of selling nearly 3,000 packages of controlled substances in the US and internationally between April 2016 and March 2017.
The drugs were sold on websites located in China and mailed to the United States, where they were distributed via the US Postal Service by a Pennsylvania former deputy sheriff named David Landis.
Drugs sold by the three defendants had been found in the systems of five people in the United States who overdosed and died, according to a Justice Department statement.
Deyao, Guichun and Liangtu, who share the alias "Alex," took online orders from China and then mailed the drugs to Landis for distribution.
The three Chinese nationals have not been arrested and are believed to be in China, a spokesman told AFP.
Landis has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing, the statement read.
Their indictments come amid a quarrel between Washington and Beijing about fentanyl trafficking -- a substance 50 times stronger than heroine, which, along with other synthetic opioids, caused 32,000 US deaths in 2018.
President Donald Trump announced new tariffs on China over the summer as a response to what he saw as their failure to stem the flow of fentanyl into the US. The two countries have since pledged to work together to fight the proliferation of the drug.
"China is supplying the United States with the most potent and deadly fentanyl and other synthetic opioids on the market today," US Attorney William M. McSwain said in the statement.
"International suppliers beware: you cannot hide behind a computer or evade our detection by drug trafficking from a far-away place," he warned.
Beijing has rejected responsibility for the US addiction crisis.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
LONDON - More and more Britons are being prescribed potentially addictive medicines like sleeping pills, opioids and other painkillers, raising the risk of a drug crisis like the one in the United States, health officials said on Tuesday.
In a government-commissioned report, researchers at Public Health England (PHE) said evidence showed that "since at least 10 years ago more people are being prescribed more of these medicines and often for longer".
In 2017 to 2018 alone, 11.5 million adults in England - more than a quarter of the adult population - was prescribed one or more of the medicines under review, the PHE analysis found.
The medicines included anti-anxiety drugs called benzodiazepines and sleeping pills known as z-drugs, as well as the epilepsy and anxiety medicines gabapentin and pregabalin, antidepressants, and opioid pain medicines.
Many of these can be addictive and could cause problems for people taking them or coming off them, PHE said. The report also found higher rates of prescribing to women and older people.
While prescribing of some drugs, like benzodiazepines and opioids, has dipped a little recently amid fears about the deadly opioid epidemic in the United States, others, such as the gabapentin, pregabalin, and some antidepressants, are being prescribed more often and for longer.
"This means more people are at risk of becoming addicted to them or having problems when they stop using them," PHE said.
"It also costs the NHS (National Health Service) a lot of money, some of which is wasted because the medicines do not work for everyone all the time, especially if they are used for too long."
An opioid epidemic in the United States has killed almost half a million Americans since 1999, and a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) policy forum earlier this year warned that the United States "is by no means alone in facing this crisis."
The Paris-based OECD said deaths linked to opioid use were rising sharply in Sweden, Norway, Ireland, and England and Wales.
Responding to the PHE report, Britain's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said it is watching the U.S. crisis closely and aiming to take avoiding action.
"We take the experience in the U.S. of dependence and addiction to opioids very seriously and are following ... developments ... to learn from the actions other countries are taking to tackle this issue," it said in a statement.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
