Friday, 29 March, 2024
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Fentanyl chemicals added to controlled substance list

A UN body has added two chemicals used to make the drug fentanyl, which killed music star Prince, to an international list of controlled substances, which the US said would help fight a wave of deaths by overdose.

Reuters Health reports that fentanyl is a man-made opioid 100 times more powerful than morphine. Roughly 20,000 US overdose deaths in 2015 involved heroin or synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

The report says an annual meeting of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which also acts as the governing body of the Vienna-based UN office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), voted to "schedule" two fentanyl precursors and a fentanyl-like substance, meaning they would be added to an international control list. Putting the chemicals on the control list ensures closer international monitoring of suspicious orders and transactions, which should make it harder for people aiming to produce fentanyl illegally to get hold of these chemicals.

"None of us lives under the illusion that this is a silver bullet to solving our opioid crisis," a US State Department spokesperson said in response to the decision. "But this vote will make it harder for the criminals that are illicitly producing fentanyl to access the necessary resources. It will require countries to regulate the production, sale, and export of the precursors to fentanyl, and to criminalise sale or trafficking outside of those regulations."

The UNODC named the two precursors as 4-anilino-N-phenethylpiperidine (ANPP) and N-phenethyl-4-piperidone (NPP). A fentanyl analog called butyrfentanyl, a drug similar to fentanyl, was also added, it said.

The State Department spokesperson said they were the two leading chemicals used to illegally produce fentanyl in the US.

The report says UN and US officials also emphasised that the decision was an example of effective action by the UN at a time when the Trump administration is aiming to slash funding for both the State Department and the UN.

[link url="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-un-drugs-fentanyl-idUSKBN16N2MB"]Reuters Health report[/link]

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