Illustration: Liu Xidan/GT

China has made serious démarches to the US and strongly opposed its so-called "designation," which has no basis in facts and is a malicious smear against China, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at Monday's routine press briefing, in response to the latest designation submitted to the US Congress in which US President Joe Biden identified China as a "major drug source country."

The Chinese government has always been serious about fighting drugs. China has scheduled 456 anesthetic and psychotropic drugs and two entire classes of substances, making it one of the countries that have scheduled the most substances and exercised the strictest control on drugs, said Mao.

China has listed 38 types of controlled precursor chemicals — 14 more than those regulated by the United Nations. Narcotics control authorities have put in place a comprehensive and dynamic supervision mechanism for all stages of precursor chemical management, the spokesperson noted. 

China has the strictest drug control policy in the world and enforces it in the fullest way. Our efforts are widely recognized by the international community, said Mao. 

China has prosecuted a total of 467,000 individuals for drug-related crimes in the past five years, representing a 33 percent decrease over the  previous five-year period, the Supreme People's Procuratorate said in late June, noting that the decline in arrest and prosecution indicates the effectiveness of its anti-drug efforts and the successful containment of the rising trend of drug-related crimes.

Also, according to a press release by the Chinese Embassy in the US in June, China has signed 50 intergovernmental and interdepartmental drug control cooperation documents with more than 30 countries and coalitions of states, established annual meeting mechanisms with 13 countries, joined five multilateral drug control cooperation mechanisms including the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and set up 13 border drug control liaison offices with neighboring countries.

However, the US, with 5 percent of the world's population, consumes 80 percent of the opioids produced in the world — which makes the US a black hole and source of the global drug control problem. The US is the country with the single greatest drug demand and so it is in no position to point its finger at China's counter-narcotics efforts, Mao noted.

Through an investigation into the US' opioid crisis, which reveals the country's legislative and law enforcement failures over the decades, the Global Times found that the US is disinclined to find a radical cure, while scapegoating China as a conduit for mounting anger in American society.

Incompetence and ineffective control is the true cause of the pervasive drug problem in the US, and the fundamental solution is to reduce domestic demand. We urge the US to stop blaming and smearing China and do things in ways that are conducive to cooperation with China, not otherwise, Mao said.

Global Times