Opioids: ’60 Minutes’ heads to China and follows trail to Akron – News – Akron Beacon Journal

Akron will be featured in a ’60 Minutes’ report Sunday that focuses on illegal synthetic opioids coming from China.

The television program traveled to China and tracked down a man accused of illegally shipping the drugs to the United States. Some of those drugs wound up in Akron and were sold to Carrie Dobbins, 23, and Tom Rauh, 37, who fatally overdosed on fentanyl after taking the drug in separate incidents in March 2015.

Federal authorities have accused two Chinese nationals Fujing Zheng, also known as Gordon Jin, and his father Guanghua Zheng, of making and shipping fentanyl and 250 other drugs to at least 25 countries and 37 states.

In an excerpt provided by 60 Minutes, producer Robert Anderson confronted Guanghua Zheng in Shanghai and showed him a wanted poster with his picture. Zheng was asked whether he is concerned the Chinese government may arrest him.

“The government has nothing to do with it,” he replied.

Matt Cronin, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, is frustrated that the Chinese government isn’t helping to stop the drugs from entering the United States.

“It is a fact that these synthetic opioids are responsible for the overwhelming increase in overdose deaths in the United States,” he tells 60 Minutes. “And it is a fact that if the People’s Republic of China wanted to shut down the synthetic opioid industry they could do so in a day.”

To watch the excerpt, go to: www.cbsnews.com/news/how-did-enough-fentanyl-to-kill-every-man-woman-and-child-in-cleveland-reach-the-united-states-60-minutes/. 60 Minutes is broadcast at 7 p.m. Sundays on WOIO (Channel 19).