China Denies Fentanyl Trafficking to Mexico

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

Chinese President Xi Jingping.

"There is no such thing as illegal trafficking of fentanyl between China and Mexico," China's foreign ministry said, responding to a letter from the Mexican president asking Beijing to help limit illicit flows of the deadly drug.

"China has not been notified by Mexico about any seizure of fentanyl from China," ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a regular briefing.

"The U.S. needs to face up to its own problems and take more substantive measures to strengthen regulation within its borders and reduce demand," Mao said, referring to drug abuse as a problem "made in the U.S."

Mexico's president said on Tuesday he had written to Chinese President Xi Jinping, urging him to help control shipments of fentanyl as he fended off criticism in the U.S. that Mexico is not doing enough to stop the trafficking of the synthetic opioid. "We come to you, President Xi Jinping, not to ask for your support in the face of these rude threats, but to request that for humanitarian reasons, you help us control shipments of fentanyl that can be sent from China to our country," he said.

The letter and China's response did not mention supplies of the precursor chemicals used to make the drug. The DEA says both finished fentanyl and precursors are transported from China to Mexico, the United States, and Canada, often by international mail.

Fentanyl, widely used in hospitals during anesthesia and for pain relief, has become a major black-market narcotic in the United States. Mexican drug cartels have increasingly taken part in the illegal business.

Lopez Obrador says fentanyl laboratories have sprung up in Mexico, and he told Xi that law enforcement had last year destroyed nearly 1,400 clandestine labs mixing the drug with other substances, and seized seven tonnes of it.

A Reuters report found that many of the labs were inactive.

But Lopez Obrador says Mexico does not produce fentanyl and that cartels buy it direct from Asia. He said in the letter that only 30% of the drug consumed in the U.S. enters via Mexico.

Overdoses of opioids killed more than 100,000 people in the 2022 U.S. fiscal year, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador defended efforts to curb drug supply in the March 22 letter, while rounding on U.S. critics, some of whom want Washington to intervene militarily in Mexico.

U.S. officials contest the view that fentanyl is not produced in Mexico, arguing the opioid is mass-produced in the country using chemicals sourced largely from China.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has been at the forefront of U.S. pressure on Mexico, and on Monday he said he would put forward legislation on fentanyl that would include designating Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said countering the fentanyl threat was a top priority, and he pushed back against Graham's criticism, saying the vast majority of people arrested in the U.S. for trafficking fentanyl are Americans.

"There's no other country in the world that's doing as much against fentanyl trafficking to the United States as Mexico," Ebrard told the news conference.

Source Reuters, Reuters