US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken urged the international community to unite in the fight against the synthetic drug fentanyl, which is wreaking havoc in the United States, during the UN Conference on Narcotics in Vienna on Friday.
“My message to this assembly is urgent: if we want to change the course 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). short name in English), sitting in the Austrian capital for ten days.
“More than 40% of Americans know someone who has died from an overdose of synthetic drugs,” the country’s “leading cause of death among 18- to 45-year-olds,” he added.
Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid, intended for medical applications but also used as a medicine.
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, particularly Mexicans, with the substances needed for its production.
President Joe Biden, campaigning for re-election in November, has made the issue one of his priorities, and Blinken on Friday pledged $175 million for the international fight against fentanyl.
“Synthetic drugs have changed the landscape, making the production and smuggling of highly potent and often deadly substances cheap and easy,” said UNODC Executive Director Ghada Wali.
“This phenomenon increases the risk of traditional herbal medicine, but does not replace it,” he declared at the opening of the conference on Thursday.
Blinken created a coalition of 151 countries to fight the ravages of fentanyl.
The United States is putting special pressure on China to fight this synthetic drug that kills thousands of Americans every year.
A US delegation traveled to China in early February to negotiate the implementation of commitments made during a meeting between Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in California in November.
However, according to a US diplomatic source, no bilateral meeting is planned between the US and China in Vienna.
Washington accuses Beijing of not doing enough to combat the illegal production and export of ingredients used to manufacture the drug.
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