(Trends Wide Spanish) — The summit of North American leaders that is taking place in Mexico revolves, among others, around an issue that has been the concern of the United States for the last few years: fentanyl and the flow of this opioid into the country, due to the threat it represents to public health.
In fact, this Monday, the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) reviewed how to interrupt the supply of illicit chemical precursors used to manufacture fentanyl, close drug laboratories and prevent drug trafficking. drugs, weapons and people across a common border, reported the White House.
Investigators seized more than $9 million worth of fentanyl, the largest amount of the drug in New York City history.
“We are going to discuss our shared security, including our joint action to address the fentanyl plague, which has killed 100,000 Americans so far, and how we can address irregular migration, which I think we are fine in our way of doing,” he said. White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Monday when referring to the key issues of the summit.
According to Sullivan, during this meeting, officials will spend “a considerable amount of time… discussing how we can improve and enhance our cooperation on fentanyl.”
The fight against fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that resembles morphine but is up to 100 times more powerful, is so important to the administration of President Joe Biden that, together with the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, they will speak about the ways in which the US and Mexico can cooperate more effectively and implement technology and work jointly among binational authorities to control the supply chain of this substance, Sullivan said Monday.
In fact, the White House stressed this week the importance of Mexico’s fight against this substance and how this country has taken “significant measures”, one of them, the capture of Ovidio Guzmán López, the son of JoaquÃn ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán. , sentenced to life in prison in the US for drug trafficking. According to John Kirby, the US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, the arrest of Ovidio Guzmán “is no mean achievement by the Mexican authorities. And we are certainly grateful for that.”
Guzmán’s capture occurred on January 5, 2023 in Sinaloa, in northern Mexico. Guzmán was transferred to the maximum security prison of the Altiplano in the State of Mexico. After his capture, a judge ordered him 60 days in pretrial detention and temporarily suspended his extradition to the US.
“This allows López Obrador to appear before Biden with this ‘medal’ hanging from his chest and also tell Biden ‘don’t claim that I’m not doing anything with fentanyl because I just arrested Ovidio Guzmán, one of the main fentanyl traffickers. to the US, don’t complain to me anymore,” said Jorge Castañeda, former foreign minister of Mexico and a Trends Wide contributor.
In September 2022, the US government had targeted members of the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel —to which Ovidio Guzmán belongs— with sanctions for trafficking a “significant portion of illicit fentanyl and other deadly drugs that enter the US. “
What about the fentanyl crisis in the United States?
Fentanyl is one of the biggest health concerns for the United States today, as it is a drug that is seriously fueling the overdose epidemic that the country is going through.
In fact, between February 2021 and 2022, almost 109,000 American deaths from overdoses of this substance were recorded, and the overdose pandemic in the US produces one fatality every 5 minutes.
“It is a threat to the national security, to the foreign policy and to the economy of the United States,” President Joe Biden said in September 2022 about the declaration of emergency due to the illegal entry of synthetic drugs into the country.
The concern is such that just a couple of weeks ago, the Los Angeles division of the DEA seized enough fentanyl by 2022 to kill the entire population of Southern California.
In fact, since August 2022, Border Patrol has seized more than 20,000 pounds of fentanyl, enough to kill about 1,000 people in the United States.
“Twenty thousand pounds of fentanyl. He is a murderer. A silent murderer,” Biden said on January 5 when speaking about security on the country’s southern border.
Fentanyl is a prescription drug for patients with severe or chronic pain who “have physical tolerance to other opioids,” according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
When fentanyl is sold illegally, it leads to drug addiction problems. According to the US government, fentanyl is sold illegally under the following common names: “Apache, China Girl, China White, Dance Fever, Friend, Goodfellas, Jackpot, Murder 8, and Tango & Cash.” In contrast, “in its prescription (legal) form, fentanyl is known as Actiq®, Duragesic®, and Sublimaze®,” the institute says.
This substance is an opioid, which in turn are drugs that “found naturally in the poppy or opium poppy plant.” When the chemical structure of these drugs is replicated in laboratories, it is referred to as the manufacture of synthetic or semi-synthetic opioids.
But while in its controlled form it can be beneficial for treating certain diseases, fentanyl is made more dangerous by what some drug dealers do: combine it at the time of manufacture with other drugs (such as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA, says NIDA) to make it cheaper.
This US opioid crisis is such that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says there is an urgent need for overdose prevention interventions. The reason is that more than 80% of drug overdose deaths are related to opioids. Fentanyl, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines (alone or in combination) are responsible for nearly 85% of overdose deaths in 24 states and the District of Columbia, according to data collected between January and June 2019. .
Some data on the consumption of fentanyl in the US.
Fentanyl deaths and overdoses in the United States were a topic in the recent midterm elections in this country. So much so that some candidates, mainly Republicans, associated without evidence the increase in fentanyl overdose with the increase in illegal migration across the US southern border.
So much so that 50% of Americans and 70% of Republicans believe to a greater or lesser degree that most of the fentanyl that enters the United States is smuggled in the hands of irregular immigrants, according to an IPSOS and NPR poll. .
But these assertions are not true. According to data from the Cato Institute, a Washington-based think tank, fentanyl smuggling is financed “by the American consumers who pay for illicit opioids: nearly 99% of whom are American citizens.”
By 2021, U.S. citizens were 86.3 percent of convicted fentanyl drug traffickers, ten times more than illegal immigrant convictions for the same crime, according to the Cato Institute.
And more than 90% of fentanyl seizures occurred at legal crossing points or in-vehicle checkpoints, not along illegal migration routes. This is because, according to the Cato Institute, “US citizens (who are subject to less scrutiny) when they cross legally make the best smugglers.”
And only 0.02 percent of people arrested by Border Patrol for crossing illegally possessed fentanyl.
With this panorama and this crisis on the rise, Biden will address this week in Mexico City one of the public health crises that most affects Americans.
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(Trends Wide Spanish) — The summit of North American leaders that is taking place in Mexico revolves, among others, around an issue that has been the concern of the United States for the last few years: fentanyl and the flow of this opioid into the country, due to the threat it represents to public health.
In fact, this Monday, the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) reviewed how to interrupt the supply of illicit chemical precursors used to manufacture fentanyl, close drug laboratories and prevent drug trafficking. drugs, weapons and people across a common border, reported the White House.
Investigators seized more than $9 million worth of fentanyl, the largest amount of the drug in New York City history.
“We are going to discuss our shared security, including our joint action to address the fentanyl plague, which has killed 100,000 Americans so far, and how we can address irregular migration, which I think we are fine in our way of doing,” he said. White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Monday when referring to the key issues of the summit.
According to Sullivan, during this meeting, officials will spend “a considerable amount of time… discussing how we can improve and enhance our cooperation on fentanyl.”
The fight against fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that resembles morphine but is up to 100 times more powerful, is so important to the administration of President Joe Biden that, together with the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, they will speak about the ways in which the US and Mexico can cooperate more effectively and implement technology and work jointly among binational authorities to control the supply chain of this substance, Sullivan said Monday.
In fact, the White House stressed this week the importance of Mexico’s fight against this substance and how this country has taken “significant measures”, one of them, the capture of Ovidio Guzmán López, the son of JoaquÃn ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán. , sentenced to life in prison in the US for drug trafficking. According to John Kirby, the US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, the arrest of Ovidio Guzmán “is no mean achievement by the Mexican authorities. And we are certainly grateful for that.”
Guzmán’s capture occurred on January 5, 2023 in Sinaloa, in northern Mexico. Guzmán was transferred to the maximum security prison of the Altiplano in the State of Mexico. After his capture, a judge ordered him 60 days in pretrial detention and temporarily suspended his extradition to the US.
“This allows López Obrador to appear before Biden with this ‘medal’ hanging from his chest and also tell Biden ‘don’t claim that I’m not doing anything with fentanyl because I just arrested Ovidio Guzmán, one of the main fentanyl traffickers. to the US, don’t complain to me anymore,” said Jorge Castañeda, former foreign minister of Mexico and a Trends Wide contributor.
In September 2022, the US government had targeted members of the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel —to which Ovidio Guzmán belongs— with sanctions for trafficking a “significant portion of illicit fentanyl and other deadly drugs that enter the US. “
What about the fentanyl crisis in the United States?
Fentanyl is one of the biggest health concerns for the United States today, as it is a drug that is seriously fueling the overdose epidemic that the country is going through.
In fact, between February 2021 and 2022, almost 109,000 American deaths from overdoses of this substance were recorded, and the overdose pandemic in the US produces one fatality every 5 minutes.
“It is a threat to the national security, to the foreign policy and to the economy of the United States,” President Joe Biden said in September 2022 about the declaration of emergency due to the illegal entry of synthetic drugs into the country.
The concern is such that just a couple of weeks ago, the Los Angeles division of the DEA seized enough fentanyl by 2022 to kill the entire population of Southern California.
In fact, since August 2022, Border Patrol has seized more than 20,000 pounds of fentanyl, enough to kill about 1,000 people in the United States.
“Twenty thousand pounds of fentanyl. He is a murderer. A silent murderer,” Biden said on January 5 when speaking about security on the country’s southern border.
Fentanyl is a prescription drug for patients with severe or chronic pain who “have physical tolerance to other opioids,” according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
When fentanyl is sold illegally, it leads to drug addiction problems. According to the US government, fentanyl is sold illegally under the following common names: “Apache, China Girl, China White, Dance Fever, Friend, Goodfellas, Jackpot, Murder 8, and Tango & Cash.” In contrast, “in its prescription (legal) form, fentanyl is known as Actiq®, Duragesic®, and Sublimaze®,” the institute says.
This substance is an opioid, which in turn are drugs that “found naturally in the poppy or opium poppy plant.” When the chemical structure of these drugs is replicated in laboratories, it is referred to as the manufacture of synthetic or semi-synthetic opioids.
But while in its controlled form it can be beneficial for treating certain diseases, fentanyl is made more dangerous by what some drug dealers do: combine it at the time of manufacture with other drugs (such as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA, says NIDA) to make it cheaper.
This US opioid crisis is such that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says there is an urgent need for overdose prevention interventions. The reason is that more than 80% of drug overdose deaths are related to opioids. Fentanyl, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines (alone or in combination) are responsible for nearly 85% of overdose deaths in 24 states and the District of Columbia, according to data collected between January and June 2019. .
Some data on the consumption of fentanyl in the US.
Fentanyl deaths and overdoses in the United States were a topic in the recent midterm elections in this country. So much so that some candidates, mainly Republicans, associated without evidence the increase in fentanyl overdose with the increase in illegal migration across the US southern border.
So much so that 50% of Americans and 70% of Republicans believe to a greater or lesser degree that most of the fentanyl that enters the United States is smuggled in the hands of irregular immigrants, according to an IPSOS and NPR poll. .
But these assertions are not true. According to data from the Cato Institute, a Washington-based think tank, fentanyl smuggling is financed “by the American consumers who pay for illicit opioids: nearly 99% of whom are American citizens.”
By 2021, U.S. citizens were 86.3 percent of convicted fentanyl drug traffickers, ten times more than illegal immigrant convictions for the same crime, according to the Cato Institute.
And more than 90% of fentanyl seizures occurred at legal crossing points or in-vehicle checkpoints, not along illegal migration routes. This is because, according to the Cato Institute, “US citizens (who are subject to less scrutiny) when they cross legally make the best smugglers.”
And only 0.02 percent of people arrested by Border Patrol for crossing illegally possessed fentanyl.
With this panorama and this crisis on the rise, Biden will address this week in Mexico City one of the public health crises that most affects Americans.
