China's Online Drug Market Puts Silk Road to Shame
The country now supplies the ingredients for almost 90 percent of Mexican cartel meth consumed in the U.S.
For a nation infamous for online censorship - try Googling ‘Tibetan Independence’ from a Beijing IP address - China has become a heavyweight player in the global drug market.
A New York Times report details how as many as 150 Chinese companies are making a fortune selling drugs both legal and illegal through various websites. We’re not talking about a handful of pills per order either but pounds and pounds of chemical compounds. So much, in fact, that China is now the lead produced and exporter of synthetic drugs, meth included. Chinese companies are also now the lead suppliers of the ingredients the Mexican drug traffickers responsible for 90 percent of all meth being consumed in the U.S. Meanwhile, U.S. law enforcement says there seems to be little interest from their Chinese counterparts in stemming the tide.
The Washington Post tested the ordering process for a few pounds of illegal street drugs and found that as long as you have a few thousand dollars on hand ready to wire, you can get through the process from search to checkout in just under half an hour. Delivery is a little longer – up to 10 business days.
Besides drugs that have already been banned, many of the synthetic compounds are constantly changing recipes faster than the laws can match them. This may account for the recent spike in synthetic drug overdoses as users can only hope the compounds behind their favorite label have yet to be changed.
