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China has found another vulnerability in America’s borders and supply chain – and it’s being exploited.
An illicit pipeline is bringing an experimental injectable drug from Chinese chemical manufacturers directly into American homes. The drug is retatrutide, commonly called “reta,” and is in clinical trials as a potential treatment for obesity and type 2 diabetes. This means there is no FDA-approved version, no lawful generic and it’s illegal to sell to patients.
But the national security concern goes far beyond one drug.
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What we are witnessing is an illegal international supply chain that begins with chemical suppliers in Communist China, moves through customs fraud and concealed shipments, is relabeled by American middlemen and ends with an unapproved injectable drug in an American home.
We’ve seen this playbook before.
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For years, Chinese chemical companies have supplied precursor chemicals used by cartels to make fentanyl. Now there is evidence that elements of this same infrastructure are being used for another lucrative American market: people looking for weight-loss drugs.
Blockchain researchers at Chainalysis were able to track proceeds from U.S. peptide sales flowing back to China-based chemical manufacturers that have produced synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl. TRM Labs has similarly detected a pattern of Chinese chemical companies that produce fentanyl precursors turning to the “peptide business.”
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This should set off alarm bells across Washington.
The fentanyl crisis demonstrated what happens when foreign chemical suppliers, transnational criminal organizations and illicit financial networks exploit weaknesses in America’s borders and supply chains. We cannot make the same mistake twice by waiting until another illicit market becomes a full-blown crisis before confronting it.
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The methods being used should also sound familiar.
Reta and other GLP-1 ingredients are being shipped to the United States under false descriptions that conceal what is actually inside the package and there is no reliable way for patients to verify the identity, purity, potency or sterility of what they are injecting into themselves. Once regulators have identified sellers engaged in this illegal behavior, the sellers then make changes needed to adapt.
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Some vendors use coded names such as “GLP-3 RT.” One vendor even distributed a “peptide cheat sheet” explaining that “GLP-3 RT” meant retatrutide and providing weekly dosing instructions. To further obscure their activity, sellers stamp packages “for research use only” while providing customers with dosing instructions, syringes and videos showing them how to prepare the drug for injection.
In this photo provided by the New York City Police Department, narcotics, including fentanyl, and drug paraphernalia lie stored in the floor of a day care center, Sept. 21, 2023, in New York. (Courtesy NYPD via AP, File)
This is not simply skirting U.S. law. It is intentional evasion.
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And it’s happening at scale.
In one operation, Customs and Border Protection officers in Cincinnati uncovered more than 300 master cartons from China containing roughly 5,000 individual peptide shipments. Reta was among the cache of chemicals seized.
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This raises a larger question: if foreign chemical manufacturers can conceal thousands of unapproved injectable products in ordinary commerce and deliver them directly to Americans, what else can these networks move into the country?
That is why this must be treated as more than a pharmaceutical issue. This is a national security issue.
The immediate danger to consumers is also real. Products manufactured and distributed outside America’s safeguards leave buyers with no reliable way to know what they are injecting. There is no legitimate supply chain to inspect and no reliable mechanism to recall a dangerous batch.
President Donald Trump has correctly made securing our border and supply chains, fighting the illegal entry of drugs and confronting China’s economic aggression central priorities of his administration.
Now these principles must be applied to this emerging threat.
The Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, FDA, as well as state law enforcement should coordinate an aggressive enforcement strategy aimed at the entire network, from foreign manufacturers and deceptive importers to domestic distributors and the financial networks that profit from the trade.
Unlike many other policy challenges, the federal government already has many of the authorities it needs. What is missing is the muscular enforcement needed to combat the problem.
The private sector must also do its part. American tech companies, social giants, online platforms, payment processors and shipping companies cannot be idle bystanders while their platforms and services facilitate illicit commerce.
When sellers advertise unapproved injectable under coded names, provide dosing instructions and pay influencers a commission for each sale, it’s not difficult to understand what is happening.
If tech companies can identify copyrighted music, political content and alleged “misinformation” within seconds, then they should be able to identify an illegal injectable drug.
The lesson from the fentanyl crisis could not be clearer: America cannot afford to ignore foreign chemical supply chains until Americans begin to pay the price.
Today, the product is Reta. Tomorrow, it will be something else. The drug is the warning. The pipeline is the treat.
America must shut it down.
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