Mexican president Lopez Obrador blames US fentanyl crisis on ‘lack of hugs’ among families
(The Guardian).- Andrés Manuel López Obrador cites a lack ‘of hugs and embraces’ for 70,000 annual overdose deaths attributed to synthetic opioid.
Mexico’s president has said that US families were to blame for the fentanyl overdose crisis because they don’t hug their kids enough.
The comment by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador caps a week of provocative statements from him about the crisis caused by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid trafficked by Mexican cartels that has been blamed for about 70,000 overdose deaths per year in the United States.
López Obrador, commonly known as Amlo, 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, March 17th, the Mexican president told a morning news briefing that the problem was caused by “a lack of hugs, of embraces”.
“There is a lot of disintegration of families, there is a lot of individualism, there is a lack of love, of brotherhood, of hugs and embraces,” Amlo said of the US crisis. “That is why they [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 now from the US market that they see no need to sell fentanyl in their home market.