Mexico’s president makes clear he isn’t an ally in the fight against fentanyl

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Mexico Elections
Presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador acknowledges his supporters as he arrives to Mexico City's main square, the Zocalo, Sunday, July 1, 2018. Lopez Obrador has claimed victory in Mexico's presidential election, calling for reconciliation. (Anthony Vazquez/AP)

Mexico’s president makes clear he isn’t an ally in the fight against fentanyl

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In case you thought that Mexico was an ally that the United States could rely on to combat the flow of fentanyl into the country, Mexico’s president is now outright lying about the issue.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador laid the blame for the U.S. fentanyl crisis at the feet of Americans. “Here, we do not produce fentanyl, and we do not have consumption of fentanyl,” López Obrador said. “Why don’t they take care of their problem of social decay?”

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It is utterly outrageous to claim that Mexico does not produce fentanyl. Just last month, the Mexican army announced that it seized more than half a million fentanyl pills in Culiacan, the capital of the Mexican state of Sinaloa. In 2021, the Mexican army raided a lab in Culiacan that it said probably produced 70 million fentanyl pills for the Sinaloa Cartel every month.

Mexico, meanwhile, has stonewalled U.S. officials when it comes to sharing information about and addressing the fentanyl crisis, taking the same approach as Communist China. In the fiscal year 2022, over 16,000 pounds of fentanyl were seized along the Mexican border with the U.S., with who knows how many more pounds making their way into the country.

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López Obrador doesn’t want to offend Mexico’s cartels, though, so while those cartels smuggle drugs into the U.S., smuggle illegal immigrants across the border, and kidnap and murder American citizens, Mexico’s president is instead threatening to tell American Hispanics to vote for Democrats. While Mexican fentanyl kills tens of thousands of Americans every year, Mexico’s president is evidently more concerned with trying to campaign for President Joe Biden.

The Republican bluster about military action against the cartels is misguided, but it should also be clear that Mexico as a whole is not going to be a real ally to the U.S. in this crisis, as López Obrador has shown. Mexico is our largest trading partner and a regular recipient of U.S. aid. Perhaps those are the first things we should now be re-evaluating.

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