1/ NEW: In May 2019, China banned fentanyl. But @NPR found Chinese vendors shifting en masse to selling the (mostly unregulated) ingredients to make fentanyl. I visited sellers openly working in apartments and shopping malls. With @C4ADS @ltpauley https://www.npr.org/2020/11/17/916890880/we-are-shipping-to-the-u-s-china-s-fentanyl-sellers-find-new-routes-to-drug-user

2/ You can read the C4ADS report below. Scouring the regular ole internet, they found nearly 100 vendors in China openly selling fentanyl analogues, precursors, and other synthetic drugs. Curiously, many are in industrial Shijiazhuang, Hebei province. https://www.c4reports.org/lethal-exchange 

3/ One vendor called Benjamin Chen sold steelmaking products, but dealt fentanyl precursors + synthetic drugs to people on social media platforms like Facebook, Vimeo, Wickr. I tracked him down to Ningxia region, to a half demolished mining and industrial park, below.

4/ Confronted, Chen denied everything. He pointed to sites that do sell drugs - but not him. But his phone #, photo ID, address matched those on drug ads. Below, the manufacturing site where colleagues told me Chen was affable and quiet but had no idea about his side business.

5/ China’s narcotics regulator said, in a 4 page fax, that its May ban is effective. US DEA tells @NPR China fentanyl mail shipments did drop. But China also said bc of the internet’s openness “any country would have a difficult time completely eradicating illegal information.”

6/ And the problem keeps mutating: @C4ADS found vendors shifting to password protected sites. New synthetic drugs totally different from fentanyl and thus totally uncontrolled are showing up in overdose deaths. “You push on a balloon, it pops somewhere else,” said a DEA agent.