The Reuters reporters didn’t make fentanyl, had no intention to do so, and arranged for safe destruction of the chemicals and other materials they purchased
I mean.. the article says the seller was located in China and using a pseudonym to communicate over Telegram and accepting payments in cryptocurrency. All to ship precursor chemicals in packages disguised as electronics. I wouldn’t exactly be surprised if the seller didn’t have a return policy.
When I worked at a Walmart in college, I literally watched a guy and his girlfriend shoplift an entire meth lab and put it into operation while they were stealing other stuff (to pass the time, I guess?).
They were busted, obviously, but were able to nearly cook a batch while we were waiting on police and hazmat to arrive.
It sounds like a lot of the precursors are too generally used to blanket ban them because of fentanyl. Kinda seems like this is just the cost of seamless worldwide shipping, we simply can't open every bag of cat food being shipped to make sure its not a fentanyl precursor.