As the coronavirus pandemic worsens, personal protective equipment for health care workers is running in such short supply that some doctors and nurses have been forced to use bandanas or thin surgical masks to cover their faces. At the same time, supply chain disruptions caused by the outbreak in China have increased the cost of key chemicals used in illicit drugs, prompting some traffickers to diversify their offerings and start selling bootleg respirator masks.

“They're supplying them through the same exact supply chain, through the same exact marketing mechanisms, that they have with illicit drugs for a long time,” said Logan Pauley, an analyst at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies who tracks Chinese organized crime networks. “It seems like there's a huge profitability there. There's a lot of people that are really scared.”

VICE News reached out to four of these accounts and found them ready and willing to mail thousands of these masks at a time to the United States for $1 or $2 a pop. They can arrive as soon as one or two weeks, according to the vendors.

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https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7jg3z/chinese-drug-dealers-have-a-new-product-knock-off-n95-masks-for-coronavirus