China announced on Monday that it would treat all variants of the powerful opioid fentanyl as controlled substances, making good on a pledge the country’s leader, president Xi Jinping, made to US president Donald Trump late last year. He had previously taken to Twitter earlier to excoriate China over the issue, accusing it of “killing our children and destroying our country”. As before, however, the officials denied that China was causing the scourge of fentanyl-related deaths in the United States, saying the blame lay there. “We believe that the United States is the main cause of the problem of the abuse of fentanyl in the United States,” he said, citing weak enforcement and a culture of addiction. Mr Liu, however, promised that China would strictly enforce the new rules, as officials have insisted they have thus far.

Source: The Irish Times April 01, 2019 19:52 UTC