Emir Olivares and Alonso Urrutia
Newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, January 11, 2023, p. 4
The three North American countries announced yesterday that they will strengthen efforts to combat drug trafficking, particularly fentanyl, and a central point will be the attack on the supply chain.
Closing the tenth North American Leaders Summit with a message to the media, the Presidents of the United States, Joe Biden, and Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, as well as the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, gave know the agreements in this matter.
The American pointed out that the three governments decided to work to put a stop to drug trafficking and human trafficking. Today we’re talking about how the three of us can continue to deepen and strengthen our shared effort to stop the fentanyl trade, including going after the precursor chemicals used to synthesize this drug. We go after the laboratories and the places where the drugs are stored
.
In the last six months, he highlighted, authorities from Mexico and the United States have managed to detain 7,000 human smugglers at their common border and seize almost 10,000 kilograms of the deadly fentanyl
(which caused the death of 100 thousand citizens of the United States in 2021).
In this regard, López Obrador emphasized: We’re fighting fentanyl, these chemicals, and we’re doing it because we care
. He added that It is not just an issue in the United States. If we do not face this problem, this scourge, we are going to suffer it too. So, we have to act in a coordinated manner and that was dealt with (the discussion in the field of security within the Summit)
.
He argued that the challenge involved in drug trafficking has changed because it is no longer just the sale of marijuana or cocaine, now it is fentanyl and the chemicals that are the most dangerous and harmful, harmful, because they cause many deaths, we are working on it in an organized manner
.
He reported that the entry into Mexico of chemical precursors to make synthetic drugs and fentanyl that arrived through the ports, led his administration to order that customs pass to the control of the armed forces.
He recognized that there was a lot of chemical traffic in the ports of Manzanillo and Lázaro Cárdenas, which attempts have been made to control with military participation.
After the message to the media, the governments of the three countries issued a joint statement in which they stated that security cooperation includes actions to curb illegal actors and associated crimes along our shared borders, including money laundering, child sexual exploitation, human trafficking and arms trafficking
.
Before the growing global threat from synthetic drugs
The three governments said they will seek broader collaboration and better work together this year to address the use of precursor chemicals in the production of illegal substances in North America and to disrupt drug trafficking. They will also seek to strengthen public health approaches to prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery.
