US launches global alliance against fentanyl: ‘If we don’t act together, more communities will bear the catastrophic costs’

Fentanyl, an opioid 50 times stronger than heroin, is the deadliest serial killer of American adults aged 18-49. In 2022, it was responsible for two-thirds of the nation’s 110,000 overdose deaths, an all-time high. Against such a tragic backdrop, Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday virtually brought together representatives from 84 countries -a list that included Mexico, the main gateway for the potent substance into the United States, but not China, one of the three axis of its global manufacturing, trafficking and consumption- in a coalition to increase cooperation in the fight against this and other synthetic drugs.

Blinken sought in his opening speech to raise awareness among his counterparts with a graphic metaphor.“the United States is a canary in the coal mine when it comes to fentanyl”: in other words, what is happening here with fentanyl will soon happen, he suggested, in the rest of the world. “Having saturated the United States market, transnational criminal enterprises are turning elsewhere to expand their profits”, he continued; “If we don’t act together with fierce urgency, more communities around the world will bear the catastrophic costs that are already affecting so many American cities, so many American towns”.

“The criminal organizations that traffic synthetic drugs are extremely adept at exploiting weak links in our interconnected global system”, Blinken went on. “When one government aggressively restricts the precursor chemical, traffickers simply buy it elsewhere. When one country closes off a transit route, traffickers quickly shift to another. This is the definition of a problem that no country can solve alone. That’s why we’re creating this global coalition”.

Todd Robinson, Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, confirmed on Thursday at a briefing with reporters in Washington the absence of China from the summit the next day. “We’ve invited China”, he said, adding that this coalition is “the beginning of the process”. “Of course, there’s hope. Just because the PRC is not talking to the United States, they are talking to other countries. And part of the reason we’re trying to bring this coalition together is to engage other countries in their efforts against these supply chains and part of their responsibility is going to be engaging with the PRC”.

Blinken promised to organize more expert sessions, as well as a face-to-face meeting during the UN General Assembly, scheduled for September. Also speaking at Friday’s meeting was Ylva Johansson, the EU’s European Commissioner for Home Affairs, who pointed out that fentanyl is not yet as pressing a problem in Europe as it is in the United States.

In addition to the lethal opiate, on the agenda of the virtual meeting were ketamine, a potent anesthetic, legal for use in the United States; MDMA, which is in its last phase of approval by the FDA for use in patients with disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder; the analgesic tramadol; methamphetamine, which was the protagonist of the second-to-last narcotics crisis in the United States; and captagon, prescribed for attention deficit disorder, narcotic narcotics and narcolepsy.

Blinken painted a map of the distribution of these drugs in his remarks.: “Every region is experiencing an alarming rise in other synthetic drugs. In Africa, it’s tramadol; in the Middle East, fake Captagon pills; in Asia, Ketamine.”.

Easier to manufacture and transport

Compared to other substances, synthetic drugs are easier to manufacture and transport illicitly. Thousands of fentanyl pills can be hidden in the space occupied by a bale of heroin. In 2022, the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) seized 50.6 million fake pills and 4,500 kilos of fentanyl powder, the equivalent of “more than 379 million potentially lethal doses”; more than enough, therefore, to wipe out the entire U.S. population (some 330 million).

America’s relationship with fentanyl dates back to the 1990s, when pharmaceutical companies like Purdue flooded the market with pills called Oxycontin, which they marketed with the deception that they were non-addictive. When doctors stopped prescribing them to a legion of addicts, they rushed to heroin. Fentanyl, a drug invented in the 1960s that revolutionized anesthesiology, entered the scene around the middle of the last decade. At first, it arrived from China, a country that banned its export in 2019. Today, the precursor substances necessary for its manufacture are marketed from the Asian giant in Mexico, whose drug traffickers learned the formula, as well as the machines necessary to manufacture the fake pills.

During his recent visit to China, the issue was one of Blinken’s priorities. The Treasury Department recently issued sanctions against 17 individuals and companies in the Asian country accused of profiting from the business.

The pandemic exacerbated the situation. In 2020, overdose deaths grew by 20%, to 91,799 cases. In 2021, there were 106,699, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, up 16%. The following year they exceeded 110,000. The issue has also become another front in the political war between Democrats and Republicans, whose more extremist members are calling on Joe Biden’s administration to intervene militarily in Mexico to dismantle the drug trafficking groups operating in the country, similar to the way it did with the Islamic State.

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