Then the taskforce began pressuring Chinese authorities. It was an open secret that you could place an online order for flakka from a Chinese manufacturer and have it delivered to your door. A kilogram of flakka sold for $1,500 online. That was worth $50,000 on the street. And flakka was just one of hundreds of lab-made substances so new that governments did not have time to identify and ban them.
Hall, at Nova Southeastern University, made sure to bring up the China connection in media interviews last summer. He hammered away at the issue.
Their cause won support from the U.S. Department of Treasury when, in mid-October, the agency imposed Kingpin Act sanctions on one alleged synthetic drug producer in China named Bo Peng. The Drug Enforcement Agency also arrested 151 people in a nation-wide synthetic drug investigation, although most of the focus was on the cannabinoids often called synthetic marijuana.
Then, in November, Florida law enforcement officials, including Tianga and local DEA agents, visited China to directly plead their case to the government there. When they returned, China announced that back on Oct. 1 it had banned 116 different synthetic drugs, including fentanyl and flakka.