MEXICO CITY (EFE).— The United States ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, called on Mexican authorities to “work as partners” and “family” to combat synthetic drug trafficking, particularly fentanyl.
“We will be two nations with a complicated history, a border of over 3,000 kilometers, but the future belongs to a family. Mexican families, American families, we are a family and deserve security,” he said in his message at the International Conference on Synthetic Drugs, which will bring together authorities and specialists on the subject in Mexico City for three days.
Salazar would meet yesterday followingnoon with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to talk regarding how to strengthen “this strong relationship that we have in the integration of the United States, Mexico and Canada.”
In that sense, he celebrated that the commercial relationship between the United States and Mexico “is the largest in history” and that currently both countries are “the number one sub-trading partners in the world,” which “has left China in other places far behind.”
The American diplomat added that they will continue to seek to strengthen teamwork in the fight once morest drug trafficking, as well as weapons, human trafficking, and even “the crime that we see in the migrant corridor.”
The deputy assistant secretary of the Office of Counternarcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) of the US Embassy, Christopher Landberg, warned that there is “a global crisis of illicit synthetic drugs.”
He noted that in the last year more than 100,000 people died from drug overdoses in the United States, more than 70,000 of which involved synthetic opioids. In addition, he stressed that fentanyl is the leading cause of death for Americans between 18 and 45 years old.
“The US government is investing heavily to reduce demand and improve treatment” within its territory, although “it is not the only country at risk,” he asserted.
“We know that drug addiction and overdose deaths are increasing here in Mexico and in many other countries in this region, and that illicit synthetic drugs affect all regions of the world.”
Landberg called for new measures to be taken “to stop the diversion of chemical substances,” as well as “take advantage of tools to interrupt and deter illicit production.”
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New controls
“We need to use established international platforms to share information on chemical flows and the emergence of new substances. Last month the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs agreed on new controls for 23 substances, including 18 precursors used in the illicit manufacture of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs,” said Christopher Landberg, deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Embassy’s Office of Counternarcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.
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2024-05-05 07:43:42