Mexico Asks China’s Help in Curbing Production of Fentanyl Associated Press
go to original April 5, 2023

How the Mexican cartels are making profits now (The Economist)

Mexico’s president asked his Chinese counterpart for help in halting chemicals from China used by Mexican drug dealers to illegally produce fentanyl, while also complaining of “rude” U.S. pressure to curb the drug trade.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has previously said that fentanyl is America’s problem and is caused by “a lack of hugs” in U.S. families. On Tuesday he doubled down on those themes, but went further, venting in a letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping about “rude threats” from U.S. legislators over the drug trade.

López Obrador complained about calls in the United States to designate Mexican drug gangs as terrorist organizations. Some Republicans have said they favor using the U.S. military to crack down on the Mexican cartels.

“Unjustly, they are blaming us for problems that in large measure have to do with their loss of values, their welfare crisis,” López Obrador wrote to Xi in the letter published Tuesday. “These positions are in themselves a lack of respect and a threat to our sovereignty, and moreover they are based on an absurd, manipulative, propagandistic and demagogic attitude.”

Only after several paragraphs of venting, López Obrador brings up China’s exports of fentanyl precursors, and asked him to help stop shipments of chemicals that Mexican cartels import from China.

“I write to you, President Xi Jinping, not to ask your help on these rude threats, but to ask you for humanitarian reasons to help us by controlling the shipments of fentanyl,” the Mexican president wrote.

China has taken some steps to limit fentanyl exports, but mislabeled or harder-to-detect precursor chemicals continue to pour out of Chinese factories.

Read the rest at The Hour

Related: China Responds to AMLO Denying 'Illegal Trafficking of Fentanyl' (Mexico News Daily)

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