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On this episode of China Uncensored, Chinese drugs are killing Americans.
Hi, welcome to China Uncensored, I'm your host Chris Chappell.
You know how we recently talked about all the dangerous products exported from China?
Well, I want to add another one to that list.
Drugs
and I'm not talking about prescription or over-the-counter medication,
I'm talking about the kind of drugs that make you do this...
"Police say 41-year-old Kenneth Crowder ran around naked to this Melbourne neighborhood saying that he was God
and performing lewd acts on a tree!"
Ouch! I hope I wasn't that tree.
Anyway, that man was allegedly high on a new synthetic drug called Flakka
Some users call it Five-dollar Insanity
because it's a cheap way to go insane,
also to die.
At least 16 people have died from it in the past year.
Flakka is chemically similar to another group of synthetic drugs called Bath Salts.
It looks kinda like the stuff you buy at the body shop hence the name
but it makes you act like this.
"- What's your name?"
The active ingredient in Flakka is alpha-pyrrolidinovalerophenone?
Well, alpha-PVP for short.
Anyway if somehow your life is so terrible that you think taking these drugs is a good idea?
Where can you buy them?
China of course!
Flakka and Bath Salts are banned in the United States
But, you know there's the Internet.
Oh! Look!
I can buy beautiful big crystal of alpha-PVP
from Wanyou industrial based in China's Hubei province.
Here's another Chinese website.
CEC Limited where you can buy dangerous synthetic drugs
but don't try to contact the owner, Mr. Eric Chang
because Mr. Chang, whose real name is John Ley
was labeled last year as a drug kingpin by the US Treasury.
John is almost singlehandedly responsible for the Bath Salts epidemic in New York State.
John's company made at least 100 shipments of drugs to upstate New York
worth millions of dollars.
The US Drug Enforcement agency have been after John for a while.
US and China have no extradition treaties so there was nothing the US could do.
Fortunately, Chinese authorities finally arrested John at the end of 2013
not for selling Bath Salts in New York but because according to the US Treasury,
he was teaching others how to make drugs in China.
Though as you can see his company and its online business still seem to be operational.
So you might wonder
how can Chinese chemical companies ship these drugs to the US
when they're killing and hospitalizing Americans?
Well, for one, they're not necessarily illegal.
A certain chemical formula might actually be legal
or only banned on a State or local level but not on the US Federal level.
Some of these are referred to as legal highs.
You may have heard of one of them called "spice" or K2, a synthetic marijuana.
It's legal but whereas marijuana won't send someone to the hospital,
"Spice" can and in many cases, has.
70% of all Spice sold in the United States
used chemicals from a Chinese laboratory
run by a guy named Haijun Tian.
The DEA arrested him in May when he stepped off a plane in Los Angeles.
And if and when lawmakers decide to make one of these synthetic drugs illegal,
the companies can just alter the formula slightly so it's technically not illegal
though it may be just as deadly.
It's partially for this reason,
the number of new psychoactive drugs have skyrocketed in the past few years.
Another problem is these chemicals are hard for US Customs to spot.
The companies just label packages shampoo or industrial solvent or cleaner.
Customs only has the budget to inspect a tiny fraction of Chinese imports.
Of course, inside China the Chinese government could be much more effective than US Customs that cracking down on these drug labs.
The Chinese government has the money and resources to monitor pretty much every aspect of its citizen's lives
so surely they have the power to curtail the drug problem.
But when it comes to stopping drug exports
the Chinese government is doing painfully little
even has Chinese synthetic drugs are doing real damage to people in the United States.
So what can you do to stop it?
Eat pizza instead!
So what do you think should be done about synthetic drugs from China?
Leave your comments below. Be sure to subscribe and like us on Facebook.
Once again on Chris Chappell. See you next time.