ONE.- The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, urged the international community to unite in the fight against fentanyl, the synthetic drug that wreaks havoc in USAduring a conference of the HIM on narcotics in Vienna.
“My message to this assembly is urgent: if we want to change the trajectory of this crisis, there is only one way to do it, and that is together,” Blinken told delegates from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). acronym in English), meeting for ten days in the Austrian capital.
“More than 40% of Americans know someone who has died from an overdose” of synthetic drugs, “the leading cause of death among people ages 18 to 45” in the country, he added.
The United States insists on stopping commercialization
It is a powerful synthetic opiate, designed for medical applications but also used as a drug.
It is 50 times more powerful than heroin, but much easier and cheaper to produce.
The United States accuses Chinese laboratories of supplying drug traffickers, especially Mexicans, with the substances necessary to manufacture it.
“Synthetic drugs have changed the situation, making it cheaper and easier to produce and smuggle extremely potent and often deadly substances,” said UNODC Executive Director Ghada Waly.
“This phenomenon adds to the threat of traditional herbal drugs, but does not replace it,” he declared Thursday, at the opening of the conference.
Blinken formed a coalition of 151 countries to combat the ravages of fentanyl.
The United States puts special pressure on China to join the fight against this synthetic drug that kills tens of thousands of Americans every year.
Washington reproaches Beijing for not doing enough to combat the illegal production and export of the components used to manufacture this drug.
Source: With information from AFP
