At a press conference held by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador last Tuesday, a sub-secretary of health claimed that fentanyl comes into Mexico from the US.
The following video shows an excerpt from the press conference with some of the remarks made by Sub-Secretary for Prevention and Health Promotion Hugo Lopez-Gatell. Many thanks to Gary Fouse for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes and RAIR Foundation for the subtitling:
Below is the accompanying article from the Mexican daily Excélsior, also translated by Gary Fouse:
There are fentanyl routes from the US to Mexico: Lopez-Gatell: “The problem is imported”
“Fentanyl is produced from precursors that are not made in Mexico; they are made in other places, including the US,” stated the official.
A strategy of prevention to avoid a crisis in this matter was announced.
The sub-secretary for Prevention and Health Promotion, Hugo Lopez-Gatell, spoke this morning on the topic of fentanyl, a substance he claims is not produced in Mexico, but in the US; hence, he considers it an “imported problem.”
The above was announced in the morning press conference of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, in which he also stated that the government of Mexico is implementing various strategies to avoid a crisis in public health due to the use of this substance.
“Fentanyl is not produced in Mexico; fentanyl is produced from precursors that are not produced in Mexico, they are produced in other places, including the US, and there are fentanyl trafficking routes from the US to Mexico, so it is an imported problem, and the attitude of Mexico is that we don’t want it to happen to us, so we have to have very intense anticipation in prevention,” said Lopez-Gatell.
As to the strategies he mentioned, the official explained that a campaign of prevention is about to be launched which includes a website with information so that teachers can orient young people about the damages caused by fentanyl.
Hugo Lopez-Gatell took advantage of the opportunity to present a comparison with the US on the topic of the data that fentanyl has produced in the two countries, stressing that in the neighboring country, around 80,000 persons died during the year 2021 from this consumption, while in Mexico, the number of dead was 19.
“There could be underreporting in the Mexican numbers, but even if there were, let’s say the underreporting we have is 10 times more or 100 times more, but in Mexico, it doesn’t compare with the enormous problem in public health the US has in this fentanyl abuse,” explained the sub-secretary.
Finally, Lopez-Gatell made it clear that the reality in Mexico is very different from that in the US on the topic of fentanyl addiction, assuring that the country is not yet confronting a consumption crisis, which is why they are taking measures to avoid an epidemic of overdoses.
Video transcript:
| 08:00 | Next we see… the President has already commented on the havoc it can cause. | |
| 08:04 | The most terrible havoc, of course, is the loss of life, death, | |
| 08:08 | and here we make this comparison between what is happening in the US | |
| 08:13 | and what is happening in Mexico up to now, and we don’t want | |
| 08:16 | what is happening in the US to happen in Mexico. | |
| 08:20 | These statistics are, the first, 61 million, | |
| 08:24 | more than 61 million, it is a statistic that the government of the US itself | |
| 08:28 | has produced as to the number of people who, | |
| 08:32 | in 2020, a typical year, a representative year, | |
| 08:37 | people who have consumed opioids, either fentanyl, heroin, | |
| 08:42 | morphine, oxycontin, or any other medicine | |
| 08:46 | or chemical product of illegal manufacture. | |
| 08:51 | 61 million people in the world. But the second image on the board shows the comparison | |
| 08:57 | of deaths associated with the abuse of these opioid substances, particularly fentanyl | |
| 09:02 | in Mexico and the US, and you see the remarkable contrast. | |
| 09:07 | We have assumed that there could be some under-reporting in the Mexican numbers, | |
| 09:11 | and we are working to make them more exact, | |
| 09:15 | but even if so,, let’s say 10 times more, or 100 times more, | |
| 09:20 | the under reporting we have in the US, (correction) in Mexico, | |
| 09:23 | it does not compare with the enormous problem in public health | |
| 09:27 | the US has with this abuse of fentanyl. | |
| 09:32 | And this also has to do with the fact that the fentanyl epidemic | |
| 09:36 | is an imported epidemic. The US, | |
| 09:40 | since the 1950s, after the World War, began to have | |
| 09:44 | a very free use of opioid medicines | |
| 09:48 | in the medical treatment of pain, | |
| 09:51 | and this contributed to the growth of dependence, | |
| 09:56 | of addiction, which in turn, led to the illegal use of opioid substances, including today, | |
| 10:02 | and predominantly fentanyl. | |
| 10:05 | And secondly, as already explained in the conference dedicated to public safety, | |
| 10:09 | fentanyl is not produced in Mexico. Fentanyl is produced | |
| 10:14 | from precursors that are not produced in Mexico. | |
| 10:17 | They are produced in other places, including the US, and there are fentanyl routes | |
| 10:22 | from the US into Mexico. So it is an imported problem. | |
| 10:26 | And the attitude of the Mexican government is that we don’t want | |
| 10:30 | it to happen to us, so we have to have a very intense anticipation | |
| 10:36 | in prevention, so we are acting in prevention, | |
| 10:39 | and what I will comment on next about the campaign of abuse prevention | |
| 10:42 | of fentanyl in Mexico although up to now | |
| 10:45 | it has not been a big problem in public health. | |
| 10:49 | And secondly, there is cooperation. We want to cooperate with the US, which has | |
| 10:53 | an enormous problem with fentanyl addiction, | |
| 10:57 | fentanyl production, and the importation of fentanyl from other regions, | |
| 11:02 | particularly from Asia, and so we also want to help, as good neighbors, | |
| 11:07 | in matters of public health in the reduction of addiction. |
The fentanyl epidemic occurs here in the US because for whatever reason it is useful to those who can control what comes across the border but refuse to do so.
Mexico isn’t a sick society full of dysfunctional minorities and self-hating elites. I’m not entirely convinced that Mexico is responsible for the fentanyl epidemic, and the bellicose grunting amongst neo-con wannabes about invading Mexico to end the cartels says to me all that I need to know about the likely players behind the import of fentanyl and why it’s happening.
Fentanyl is made in China brought to Mexico goes threw our open borders ,it addicts live on our blue cities streets that are soft on crime. Free needle open street drug use is accepted in many American blue cities .Bad behavior be it shoplifting, open street drug use ,homeless mental ill drug addicted zombies committing mayhem ,stupid violent crime by fatherless children running the streets have become an accept part of the part of living in blue cities. Yes the leaders of Mexico have a point ,we are soft on criminals here in America ,and soft on China dumping tons of fentanyl into Mexico to come threw open borders between both countries. The use of methadone from the 1970s till now has been a failure to get addicts off of opioid use. Soft on crime, mental ill people on the streets, the break down of the family structure ,lack of fathers or men willing to take responsibility for their children. These are all gingos problems that are supported by progressives take that the government replacing parents responsibility for raising their children .THe people who should have some control over our borders are freely importing and spreading this problem encouraging it to grow with their policies at the borders and in the blue city idiotic policies of no punishment’s for bad criminal behavior. Meth is home made in America was the main problem before the importation of fentanyl at the border. 50 years ago it was drugs from southeast Asia ,we have learn nothing in the last 60 years in the war on drugs.Lack of personal responsibility or self control, no family structure is the many families in America in the 21 century.Lack of a moral compass with people making slogans and free style MSM their religion of choice
Until you try to find a way for 22% of the US population to stop snorting, smoking, shooting and taking pills, this ain’t never going to stop, so I am all for Darwin taking care to those people without an ounce of sympathy or remorse. The more fentanyl that comes in, the sooner it eliminates those 22% and the smart ones will quit doing it.