MEXICO CITY –
Mexico’s president said Friday that American families are to blame for the fentanyl overdose crisis because they don’t hug their children enough.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s remarks ended the week with provocative statements from him about the crisis caused by fentanyl, a synthetic opiate traded by Mexican cartels that has been blamed for about 70,000 drug overdose deaths each year in the United States.
Lopez Obrador said family values have been broken in the United States, because parents don’t let their children live at home long enough. He also denied that Mexico produced fentanyl.
On Friday, the Mexican president told a morning news conference that the problem was with “lack of hugs, hugs.”
“There are a lot of broken families, a lot of individualism, a lack of love, brotherhood, hugs and hugs,” said Lopez Obrador of the crisis in the United States. “That’s why they (US officials) should set aside money to address the causes.”
Lopez Obrador has repeatedly said that Mexico’s entwined family values are what saved it from a wave of fentanyl overdoses. Experts say Mexican cartels are now making so much money from the US market that they see no need to sell fentanyl in their home market.
Gangs often sell methamphetamine in Mexico, where the drug is more popular because it’s believed to help people work harder.
Lopez Obrador has been stung by calls in the United States to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations. Some Republicans said they support using the US military to crack down on Mexican cartels.
On Wednesday, Lopez Obrador called anti-drug policies in the United States a failure on Wednesday and proposed bans on the medicinal use of fentanyl in both countries – even though very little of the drug has been brought from the patient’s illness. enter the illegal market.
US authorities estimate that most illicit fentanyl is produced in secret Mexican laboratories using Chinese precursors. Relatively little illicit market comes from diverting the drug fentanyl used as an anesthetic in surgery and other procedures.
There are only scattered and isolated reports of glass vials containing pharmaceutical fentanyl being marketed illegally. Most illegal fentanyl is pressed by Mexican cartels into fake pills that are made to look like other drugs like Xanax, oxycodone or Percocet.
