Biden Picks Up Second Major International Commitment to Stop Fentanyl Crisis

First China, now Mexico: President Biden has secured another major international commitment to crack down on the fentanyl crisis.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador—AMLO for short—said his country was “sincerely committed” to address the crisis in Mexico’s “fullest capacity” to “prevent drug trafficking, namely the entrance of fentanyl and other chemical precursors.”

A grateful Biden thanked AMLO, promising to share details of his private conversation with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the same topic.

Biden concluded, “Nothing is beyond our reach, in my view—I really mean it—when Mexico and the United States stand together and work together.”

Fentanyl deaths in the United States have nearly quadrupled from 2016 to 2021 and the drug epidemic shows no signs of abatement.

In addition to the tragic loss of life, the fentanyl crisis has been a cudgel with which Republicans have hammered the Biden administration in bad faith. The aforementioned quadrupling happened mostly under Donald Trump, indicating that this is a bipartisan, cross-administration crisis which requires bipartisan problem-solving.

Much of the fentanyl which makes its way into the United States comes by way of China and Mexico—the precursor chemicals shipping from the former to the latter before making their way into the U.S.

As long as AMLO and Xi follow through on their public commitments, Biden’s summit with the two countries in San Francisco will have gone a long way towards addressing a persistent national tragedy.