The White House met with top Mexican officials Thursday amid their country’s efforts to deny any role in the fentanyl crisis that’s ravaging American communities, according to a Biden administration statement.
The two delegations agreed to collaborate to address the trafficking of firearms, create campaigns to warn the public in both countries about the dangers of fentanyl, convene experts from each country to share information about overdose prevention, the White House said in its statement. The announcement comes as senior Mexican officials, including President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, deny their country’s role in the American fentanyl epidemic. (RELATED: Mexico’s Immigration Chief To Face Charges For Fire That Killed 40 Migrants)
“Here, we do not produce fentanyl, and we do not have consumption of fentanyl,” López Obrador said March 16 during a press conference.
“So far, there is no record of production or synthesis of fentanyl in Mexico,” Mexico’s top diplomat for North American affairs Roberto Velasco Álvarez also recently said.
Resultados del diálogo sobre seguridad que tuvo lugar hoy en Washington, DC. pic.twitter.com/7M4qSDxvZn
— Marcelo Ebrard C. (@m_ebrard) April 13, 2023
Illicit fentanyl, which is largely responsible for the more than 100,000 overdose deaths that occurred in 2021, is produced in synthetic drug labs in Mexico with chemicals that are made in China, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). It is then smuggled across the southern border of the U.S., where federal authorities have seized more than 11,000 pounds of it between October and February, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics.
Two milligrams of fentanyl is considered a lethal dose, according to the DEA.
“The United States and Mexico committed to developing a bilingual, binational public awareness prevention campaign in each country that educates our citizens, especially young people, on the dangers of synthetic drugs, including fentanyl, that ravages our communities,” the White House said in the statement. “This campaign will build on President Biden’s launch of a national anti-fentanyl campaign last week and President López Obrador’s public efforts to prevent youth drug use in Mexico.”
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