Sanctions over U.S. drug problem condemned

China on Thursday condemned sanctions imposed by the United States on Chinese enterprises and an individual in an action that Washington claims is in response to the health crisis stemming from widespread opioid addiction.

The U.S. actions target the supply of fentanyl-related substances.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the U.S. should stop shifting the blame on to other countries in relation to the problem.

Wang made the comments after the U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday imposed the sanctions on four Chinese chemical companies and one person, as it vowed to step up action to curb the epidemic of opioid overdoses that killed a record 100,000 people in the U.S. last year.

The actions "will help disrupt the global supply chain and the financial networks that enable synthetic opioids and precursor chemicals to reach the U.S.", U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

Wang, in a daily news conference, said the Chinese government adopts a "zero-tolerance" policy toward the drug issue, and has strictly regulated all kinds of narcotics, psychotropic substances and the chemicals related to them. The progress it has made in this area is obvious to the international community, he said.

China has scheduled all fentanyl-like substances, while the U.S. has yet to take any permanent measures in this regard, he said.

In May 2020, without any evidence, the U.S. Department of Commerce added the Institution of Forensic Science of the Ministry of Public Security of China and the National Narcotics Laboratory to its "entity list".

This wrong practice of asking others to take the medicine when the U.S. itself is sick is not constructive and will only disrupt bilateral law enforcement cooperation on drug control, Wang said. "We urge the U.S. to respect the facts, find out the cause of fentanyl abuse more from itself, and view China's efforts in an objective and fair manner," he said.

On May 1, 2019, the Chinese government took the lead globally in officially scheduling fentanyl substances as a class, though there was no large-scale abuse or prominent hazards relating to them in China.

According to a statement issued by the Chinese embassy in the U.S. in September, the U.S. has not seized any fentanyl and its analogues originating from China since September 2019.