Mexican president: Fentanyl is surging because of U.S. ‘social decay’
Fentanyl is rising in the US due to ‘social decay’ and not border crisis, Mexican president tells Biden: López Obrador claims rise in single-parent families, children expelled of lonely homes and grandparents are fueling drug use
- Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Thursday that the fentanyl crisis in the United States is due to “social decadence.”
- Both US and most Mexican officials have acknowledged that fentanyl is produced in laboratories in Mexico from Chinese ingredients.
- ‘Why don’t they deal with their problem of social decay?’ López Obrador said about the United States, while a senior White House official visits his country
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Thursday that the fentanyl crisis in the United States is due to “social decay” and not the powerful synthetic opioid being dumped across the southern border from Mexico.
López Obrador tried to wipe his hands of responsibility, despite the fact that both US and most Mexican officials acknowledged that fentanyl is produced in laboratories in Mexico from Chinese ingredients.
The Mexican president’s comments came as White House National Security Adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall was visiting the country and taking part in meetings about the fentanyl trade.
“Here we do not produce fentanyl, and we do not consume fentanyl,” López Obrador said. ‘Why don’t they deal with their problem of social decay?’
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Thursday that the fentanyl crisis in the US is due to “social decay” and not the powerful synthetic opioid that reaches the southern border from Mexico.
This photo provided by the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s Phoenix Division shows some of the 30,000 fentanyl pills the agency seized from one of its largest busts in August 2017.
López Obrador then listed why Americans turn to drugs, saying it is due to single-parent families, parents who throw their adult children out of their homes and the elderly who are sent to nursing homes where they are only visited ‘once a year’.
Fentanyl producers in Mexico have not spent much time developing a domestic market because shipping the drug to the US is so profitable, Mexican security analyst David Saucedo told the Associated Press.
In the US, fentanyl is frequently mixed with street drugs like cocaine and heroin, causing an epidemic of overdoses in unsuspecting users.
Fentanyl has been blamed for about 70,000 deaths in the US each year.
Senator Lindsey Graham (RS.C.) was so outraged by the rise in fentanyl deaths that he recommended that Mexican drug cartels be officially categorized as ‘Foreign Terrorist Organizations.’ He also lobbied Congress to pass military authorization for US forces to go after Mexican drug labs.
In response, López Obrador said that Mexican Americans and Hispanics should boycott the Republican Party.
“We are going to make a call not to vote for that party, because they are inhumane and interventionist,” López Obrador said.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby was asked in a Zoom call with reporters Friday to react to López Obrador characterizing fentanyl as a problem unique to the United States.
Kirby said the two presidents have yet to speak out since López Obrador made the “social decadence” comments, while noting that Sherwood-Randall is currently on the ground in Mexico.
“I can assure you that concrete steps to address fentanyl were definitely high on the list” of the US delegation’s agenda items, Kirby said.
He also pointed to the discussions that Biden, López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had over drug trafficking during the so-called ‘Three Amigos’ summit in Mexico City in January.
Fentanyl is a problem that doesn’t just affect the United States, it affects every nation in the world. It’s a global problem,” Kirby said as well. “We think we’ve made some important progress so far, but we’re not taking our foot off the accelerator. It is a critical challenge. It continues to take the lives of so many Americans.’