5BOM4DF6VII63E2QPRP4ZVMYVU.jpgw1024

Mexican president to US: Fentanyl is your downside Lalrp

Lalrp.org: 5BOM4DF6VII63E2QPRP4ZVMYVU

Remark

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s president stated Thursday that his nation doesn’t produce or eat fentanyl, regardless of monumental proof on the contrary.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador appeared to depict the artificial opioid epidemic largely as a U.S. downside, and stated america ought to use household values to combat drug habit.

His assertion got here throughout a go to to Mexico by Liz Sherwood-Randall, the White Home Homeland Safety Advisor, to debate the fentanyl disaster. It additionally comes amid calls by U.S. Republicans to make use of the U.S. army to assault drug labs in Mexico.

The Mexican authorities has acknowledged previously that fentanyl is produced at labs in Mexico utilizing precursor chemical substances imported from China. Fentanyl has been blamed for about 70,000 opioid deaths per yr in america.

“Right here, we don’t produce fentanyl, and we shouldn’t have consumption of fentanyl,” López Obrador stated. “Why don’t they (america) handle their downside of social decay?”

The Mexican president went on to recite a listing of the reason why he stated Individuals have been turning to fentanyl, together with single-parent households, and oldsters who kick grown youngsters out of their homes or ship aged kin to old-age properties “and go to them every year.”

The Mexican president’s assertion contrasted sharply with U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar’s assertion on Twitter Thursday {that a} assembly between Sherwood-Randall and Mexico’s lawyer common was meant “to boost safety cooperation and combat in opposition to the scourge of fentanyl to raised defend our two nations.”

There may be little debate amongst U.S. and even Mexican officers that the majority the fentanyl consumed in america is produced and processed in Mexico.

In February, the Mexican military introduced it has seized greater than a half million fentanyl capsules in what it known as the most important artificial drug lab discovered up to now. The military stated the outside lab was found in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state.

In the identical metropolis in 2021, the military raided a lab that it stated most likely made about 70 million of the blue fentanyl capsules each month for the Sinaloa cartel.

“The president is mendacity,” stated Mexican safety analyst David Saucedo. “The Mexican cartels, above all of the CJNG ( Jalisco New Technology Cartel) and the Sinaloa Cartel have discovered to fabricate it.”

“They themselves purchase the precursor chemical substances, arrange laboratories to supply fentanyl and distribute it cities in america and promote it,” Saucedo stated. “Little by little they’ve begun to construct a monopoly on fentanyl, as a result of the Mexican cartels are current alongside the entire chain of manufacturing and gross sales.”

Whereas it’s true that fentanyl consumption seems to stay low in Mexico and largely confined to northern border areas, that could be as a result of the Mexican authorities is so unhealthy at detecting it. A 2019 examine within the border metropolis of Tijuana confirmed that 93% of samples of methamphetamines and heroin there contained some fentanyl.

Saucedo stated that fentanyl exports have been so profitable for Mexican cartels that that they had not seen a lot want previously to develop a home marketplace for the drug.

“It’s true that fentanyl consumption in Mexico is marginal, however some mid-level cartels have begun promoting it in border cities and in large cities like Leon, Mexico Metropolis and Monterrey,” Saucedo stated.

On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham held a information convention, saying he wished “to unleash the fury and would possibly of the U.S. in opposition to these cartels.”

“The second step that we’ll be partaking in is give the army the authority to go after these organizations wherever they exist,” Graham stated. “To not invade Mexico. To not shoot Mexican airplanes down. However to destroy drug labs which might be poisoning Individuals.”

López Obrador stated Mexico wouldn’t settle for such threats, calling them “an insult to Mexico and an absence of respect for our independence and sovereignty.”

López threatened to start out a marketing campaign in america, asking Mexicans and Hispanics who stay there to not vote for Republicans.

“We’re going to subject a name to not vote for that get together, as a result of they’re inhuman and interventionist,” López Obrador stated.

Mexicans, each in authorities and outdoors it, are clearly afraid of fentanyl use growing in Mexico. A civic group has launched a marketing campaign of portray partitions with the slogan “Mxsinfentanilo” — “Mexico with out fentanyl” — and López Obrador has launched a sequence of anti-drug TV advertisements.

However as soon as once more, López Obrador’s authorities seems to view fentanyl as a U.S. downside.

Within the advertisements launched in November, the Mexican authorities used movies of homeless individuals and open-air drug customers in Philadelphia’s embattled Kensington neighborhood to attempt to scare younger individuals away from medicine.