On Tuesday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked China for help curbing Mexico’s production of fentanyl, despite his claim last month that Mexico neither produces nor consumes the drug.
López Obrador has previously expressed outrage with lawmakers from the U.S. putting the blame at Mexico’s feet and suggesting U.S. military intervention. He continued to vent his frustrations Tuesday in a letter to Chinese president Xi Jinping.
“Unjustly, they are blaming us for problems that in large measure have to do with their loss of values, their welfare crisis,” he wrote to Xi, as quoted in the Associated Press. “These positions are in themselves a lack of respect and a threat to our sovereignty, and moreover they are based on an absurd, manipulative, propagandistic and demagogic attitude.”
However, López Obrador also brought up Chinese exports of fentanyl precursors that are ending up in the hands of the cartels.
“I write to you, President Xi Jinping, not to ask your help on these rude threats, but to ask you for humanitarian reasons to help us by controlling the shipments of fentanyl,” he explained.
China has taken some steps to curb fentanyl production, but chemicals that are used in the production of fentanyl continue to pour out of Chinese factories, the Associated Press reported.
López Obrador’s comment that Mexico does not produce fentanyl is at odds with his own request to Xi as well as his administration’s admission that it has found dozens of fentanyl labs in the country, mainly in the northern state of Sinaloa.
Cartels often press fentanyl into pills that are made to look like other medications, such as Xanax. Many of the tens of thousands of overdoses in the U.S. occur because people do not know they are taking fentanyl.
López Obrador also doubled down on claims U.S. fentanyl consumption is the result of American social decay, pointing to the breakup of the family unit in the U.S.
“I would tell them for example, to keep their children at home longer, don’t kick them out of the house, keep them for two or three years more,” López Obrador said.
He also took issue with the recent news that the NBA will no longer penalize players for marijuana use. For him, that was only further evidence of decay.
“We are seeing the the basketball league has authorized players to smoke marijuana,” said López Obrador. “How can that be? Imagine, in sports! It shouldn’t be allowed anywhere.”
López Obrador has a history of writing controversial letters to world leaders and he does not always get a response. It is unknown whether Xi has received or replied to the letter.
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