Amid fentanyl crackdown, Mexico risks 'balloon effect'

- President Donald Trump says China's new ban on all fentanyl-related substances will be a "game-changer" in the deadly US opioid crisis, but experts warn it may just shift production elsewhere -- particularly Mexico.

Under pressure from Trump, China on May 1 banned all chemical analogues of fentanyl, the synthetic drug at the heart of an overdose epidemic that is killing tens of thousands of people a year in the United States.

Trump won the fentanyl concession as part of his trade war with China, which is allegedly the world's leading supplier of the powerful narcotic, along with designer drugs that mimic it and the precursor chemicals used to make all of them.

But law enforcement officials and anti-narcotics experts warn the ban will probably just push production to other countries -- including the United States' southern neighbor, whose powerful drug cartels are already deeply immersed in fentanyl trafficking.

Blame it on the "balloon effect", the idea that banning a drug is like trying to squeeze the air out of a balloon: it just moves somewhere else.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is preparing for exactly that possibility.

"It's a balloon effect.... As we put more pressure on China, they'll just send the chemicals over to Mexico to make (fentanyl) there," a DEA official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Chinese suppliers will now likely start shipping "pre-precursors" abroad to get around the ban, he said.

So many different substances can be used to make fentanyl, and the Chinese chemicals industry is so massive, that it will be impossible to regulate every potential source of the drug, he added.

"They'll figure out how to go generate two or three (chemicals) to replace the one we just put controls on," he said.

"It's great that they did that, but a chemist can go back to what is uncontrolled, work that up to the precursor they need, and make fentanyl."