Mexico, “about to buy” anti-fentanyl technology from the US for $1 billion

Washington. Mexican authorities are “about to buy” scanning equipment from US companies to combat fentanyl trafficking worth a billion dollars, a senior State Department official said Thursday.

The United States is going through a drug epidemic, with more than 100,000 deaths in 2023, most of them from synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.

Some Republican congressmen accuse Mexico of not doing enough against fentanyl trafficking carried out, according to Washington, by the cartels of Mexican drugs.

Democratic Congressman Tim Kaine asked Chris Landberg, deputy assistant secretary of the State Department’s Office of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, what grade he would give Mexico in its cooperation with the United States against this scourge.

“Do you mean a letter grade?” Landberg said during a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee session on combating transnational criminal networks and corruption in Latin America and the Caribbean.

“I think I would give the effort a pretty high grade,” but since it is the leading cause “of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and approximately 50 (years old), we have a lot of work to do,” said Landberg, who estimates that no one deserves “an A grade.” in the fight against fentanyl.

“The relationship with Mexico is key. And we are working with them at all levels,” both international, trilateral, together with Canada, and bilateral, he said.

“The fact that they are about to buy $1 billion in port scanning equipment from US companies shows the commitment” of the Mexican government to confront the flow of fentanyl precursors, he added.

“It is a shared responsibility” because part of the flow passes through the United States although the majority of the precursors arrive in Mexico from China, Landberg stated.

“It’s positive news,” Kaine replied. He added that the information available to him, although somewhat “obsolete,” shows that Mexican authorities have been slow to adopt this scanning technology at ports.

His Republican colleague Marco Rubio estimated that “the key is security” and interrupting the influx of chemical precursors but also technology, such as pill presses and other equipment.

“It’s no longer about the United States, there is now a growing problem of fentanyl consumption not only in Mexico, but in many other countries in the region,” Rubio said.