By Mark Stevenson | Associated Press
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s president said Thursday that his country does not produce or consume fentanyl, despite enormous evidence to the contrary.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador appeared to depict the synthetic opioid epidemic largely as a U.S. problem, and said the United States should use family values to fight drug addiction.His statement came during a visit to Mexico by Liz Sherwood-Randall, the White House Homeland Security Advisor, to discuss the fentanyl crisis. It also comes amid calls by U.S. Republicans to use the U.S. military to attack drug labs in Mexico.
The Mexican government has acknowledged in the past that fentanyl is produced at labs in Mexico using precursor chemicals imported from China. Fentanyl has been blamed for about 70,000 opioid deaths per year in the United States.
“Here, we do not produce fentanyl, and we do not have consumption of fentanyl,” López Obrador said. “Why don’t they (the United States) take care of their problem of social decay?”
The Mexican president went on to recite a list of reasons why he said Americans were turning to fentanyl, including single-parent families, and parents who kick grown children out of their houses or send elderly relatives to old-age homes “and visit them once a year.”
The Mexican president’s statement contrasted sharply with U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar’s statement on Twitter Thursday that a meeting between Sherwood-Randall and Mexico’s attorney general was meant “to enhance security cooperation and fight against the scourge of fentanyl to better protect our two nations.”
There is little debate among U.S. and even Mexican officials that almost all the fentanyl consumed in the United States is produced and processed in Mexico.
In February, the Mexican army announced it has seized more than a half million fentanyl pills in what it called the largest synthetic drug lab found to date. The army said the outdoor lab was…
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