Mexican president blames US for fentanyl crisis

Mexico's president has said that US families are to blame for the fentanyl overdose crisis because they don't hug their kids enough.

President Andr s Manuel L pez Obrador said on the week of provocative statements about the crisis caused by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid trafficked by Mexican cartels that has been blamed for 70,000 overdose deaths per year in the United States.

Amlo, commonly known as L pez Obrador, said family values had broken down in the United States because parents don't let their children live at home long enough. He has also denied that Mexico produces fentanyl.

On Friday, the Mexican president told a morning news conference that the problem was caused by a lack of hugs, embraces There is a lot of disintegration of families, there is a lack of love, of brotherhood, of hugs and embraces, Amlo said. That is why US officials should be dedicating funds to address the causes. Amlo has repeatedly said that Mexico's close-knit family values are what have saved it from the wave of fentanyl overdoses. Experts say that Mexican cartels are making so much money in the US market that they don't need to sell fentanyl in their home market.

Cartels often sell methamphetamines in Mexico, where the drug is popular because it purportedly helps people work harder.

Amlo has been stung by calls in the United States to designate Mexican drug gangs as terrorist organizations. Some Republicans say they favor using the US military to crack down on the Mexican cartels.

On Wednesday, the Mexican leader said anti-drug policies in the US were a failure and proposed a ban on both countries using fentanyl in medicine, even though little of the drug crosses from hospitals into the illegal market.

The US authorities estimate that most illegal fentanyl is produced in clandestine Mexican labs using Chinese precursor chemicals. The illegal market for medicine comes from diverting medicinal fentanyl used as anesthesia in surgeries and other procedures.

There have been only scattered and isolated reports of glass flasks of medicinal fentanyl making it to the illegal market. Mexican cartels pressed illegal fentanyl into counterfeit pills that look like other medications such as Xanax, oxycodone or Percocet.