Behind a computer screen in the northern Chinese city of Shijiazhuang, Dina sends emails promoting new products to her global client list. She uses a VPN to bypass the firewall imposed by the government and updates her multiple social media accounts with photos of white powder and precursor chemicals. Her profile picture looks like an AI-generated selfie. Each message is punctuated with smiley faced emojis.
‘All my prices are factory prices. I can give you a discount if you order in large quantities. I have many professional chemistry researchers. I have many companies and factories. I have my own transportation route, and I can send it safely,’ she wrote when I posed as a customer, sending images of substances in plastic bags on scales. (I hasten to add I bought nothing.)
Dina, not her real name, is an online drug trafficker, working as a sales representative for an illicit pharmaceutical company in China. The company, and many like it, sell ‘pharmaceutical intermediates’ – the precursor chemicals needed to make a range of illicit drugs, including variants of MDMA, Ketamine, synthetic cannabinoids and the synthetic opioid fentanyl which is intended primarily for medical use. In recent years synthetic opioids known as nitazenes have become one of the hottest products among drug buyers.
More powerful than fentanyl
The United States has long accused China of flooding it with often deadly synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, which street dealers mix with other drugs like heroin and cocaine to increase profits. Fentanyl is many times more potent than heroin. This has led to a dramatic rise in overdoses, with more than 70,000 Americans estimated to have suffered a fentanyl-related death in 2022.
Use of yet more potent nitazenes is spreading rapidly around the world, according to the United Nations, sparking concerns of a health crisis. In Britain, the National Crime Agency estimates there were 176 nitazene-related deaths between June 2023 and May 2024.
In 2022, the Office for National Statistics recorded 4,859 deaths related to drug poisoning, half of which involved an opiate, noting a decade of growth in drug-poisoning deaths.
Chinese-based suppliers such as Dina are confident they can keep smuggling more nitazenes into Britain. ‘There is no problem in the product passing clearance [customs] safely,’ she writes. They hide drugs in cosmetics packaging and send by post and courier companies.
A growing Chinese industry
China has the largest chemical and pharmaceutical industries in the world. International law enforcement agencies estimate there are between 40,000 and 100,000 Chinese pharmaceutical companies. The scale of the industry makes it difficult to regulate.
In April this year, a report from a US congressional hearing accused the Chinese government of subsidizing the illegal fentanyl trade by offering tax rebates to suppliers. These claims were denied by the Chinese Communist Party. In 2019 China banned fentanyl and its analogues following pressure from America. In January 2024, China and the US launched a joint operation to curb the production of the synthetic opioid fentanyl.
But America still claims China is the primary source of precursor chemicals used by Mexican cartels to synthesize fentanyl before it is smuggled into America. American law enforcement agencies estimate the international drug trade to be worth $600 billion, with many pointing to China’s unique role in sponsoring it.
‘If the Chinese government shut down all chemical production they believe to be illicit, you would see the worldwide drug trafficking industry collapse,’ said Ray Donovan, a former agent of America’s Drug Enforcement Agency. ‘It would immediately drop to a level where it would take a long time for criminal organizations to get back up to that level of production.’
Donovan headed the successful hunt for the Mexican drug lord El Chapo in 2016. He is now turning his attention to China’s involvement in the synthetic opioid trade. ‘At one point the state department estimated, there are 160,000 chemical companies and there are many thousands of sub brokers. It is a huge business,’ said Donovan.
In 2023, the Chinese National bureau of Statistics reported a youth unemployment rate of 14.9 per cent. Many young people find it difficult to secure work as China’s economy slows, prompting some to turn to the country’s illicit drug trade.
A growing number are thought to be graduates, like 28-year-old Dina. She was introduced to the industry five years ago by a friend, after leaving university and says she takes her work seriously. ‘I tested all my products from the lab before shipping out to my customers,’ she wrote.
A BBC investigation this year found thousands of posts on social-media sites, accessible in the UK, advertising more than a dozen types of nitazenes and offering bulk purchase. The investigation revealed transactions in Bitcoin worth millions of pounds to suppliers purporting to work for Chinese businesses.
Beyond Britain, synthetic drugs are transforming the drug trade around the world. Traffickers can operate from anywhere with an internet connection. And because synthetic drugs are cheap to produce and easy to smuggle, traffickers don’t have to wait for ‘harvests’ as with traditional drugs. Chemists are also able to stay one step ahead of the law by adjusting compounds, producing new variants of drugs as existing ones are banned.
Fears of an American-style crisis
For its part, China argues that the US fentanyl crisis is driven by demand, not supply. In 2022 a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson argued that ‘the US should address its own domestic issue rather than blaming China.’ Abuse of synthetic opioids is not thought to be widespread in China.
‘Fentanyl began showing up in street heroin,’ says Sanho Tree, director of the Drug Policy project in the US. ‘It was very cheap, much more potent, easier to obtain and it became very tempting for unscrupulous dealers to cut their heroin with fentanyl to stretch their profits,’ said Tree.
There are concerns that Britain could face an American-style drug crisis. Drug charities believe the government needs to implement nationwide testing facilities and overdose prevention centres. ‘Demand is not going to go away,’ said Adam Winstock, a doctor and founder of the Global Drug Survey, a UK-based report that looks at the trends of drug user around the world.
‘Governments must focus on supply reduction, demand reduction and harm reduction. Above all these efforts sit regulated markets. For synthetic drugs, governments need to get places like China to ban the production of precursors. But when that’s done, the production will move to a country with less regulation,’ said Winstock, who nevertheless believes Britain’s position differs from America’s.
‘America’s problem was that they had a prescription opioid crisis. Then you got the Mexican cartels cutting fentanyl into heroin. We have a much better regulation of prescription opioids,’ he said.
Turning to the law
In March this year the British government classified 15 synthetic opioids, including nitazenes, as Class A drugs. Dealers and producers of the drugs now face life imprisonment. Anyone possessing the drugs faces up to seven years in prison under the Misuse of Drugs Act.
Tackling Class A drugs use, including synthetic opioids, is a priority for the National Crime Agency and law enforcement colleagues due to the harm caused to users, society, the economy and communities, says Charles Yates, the agency’s deputy director. ‘Law enforcement and health partners are proactively monitoring to identify any sudden spike in drug-related deaths, to act quickly to reduce that threat,’ he said.