Yu also blamed overprescription of painkillers and state-level marijuana legalization for causing the U.S. opioid crisis, echoing comments he made previously to VICE News. “As many states decriminalize marijuana, the public’s attitudes and trends of thinking toward drugs will also have a bad effect” on the fight against fentanyl and other opioids, Yu said, according to the AP.



China’s state-run news agency Xinhua reported that the fentanyl factory raid occurred in Guangdong Province, near Hong Kong, and said police seized more than 20 kilograms of “other psychoactive substances,” along with 150 kilograms of raw materials used to manufacture drugs. The 19 arrests were made throughout November and December in the cities of Hebei, Jiangsu, Shanghai, and Zhejiang, according to Xinhua.

Fentanyl is now the leading cause of overdose death in the U.S., accounting for more than 19,000 of the 66,000 total drug-related fatalities last year, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Under pressure from the U.S., China banned production of multiple synthetic opioids related fentanyl earlier this year. Chineses authorities say they have arrested dozens of illicit traffickers, destroyed several underground labs, and seized tons of illegal drugs since 2016.

In a statement to VICE News, DEA spokesman Rusty Payne said the agency “continues to work closely with our counterparts in China to address the opioid epidemic that has plagued the United States and other parts of the world.” Payne noted that the DEA “has sent several delegations of executives to China in recent months,” including a visit by the DEA’s then-acting director in January 2017.

But fentanyl still remains a sore subject, with President Donald Trump recently blaming China for sending a “flood of cheap and deadly” synthetic opioids to the U.S. After his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jingping in November, Trump said the two leaders agreed to make fentanyl a “top priority” but offered no specifics on what would be done.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson later said Xi “committed to taking new actions including agreements to control the export and movement of fentanyl precursors, sharing intelligence on drug trafficking, and exchanging trafficking information."