China denounces Antony Blinken’s call for countries to work together to combat synthetic drugs

Inaugurating a new US-led ‘coalition’ on the scourge, the US secretary of state told ministers from more than 80 countries that America was ‘a canary in the coal mine’

China ‘opposes … imposing unilateral sanctions on other countries in the name of counter-narcotics,’ foreign ministry spokesman Weng Wenbin said in Beijing

Reading Time:2 minutes

A bag of fentanyl which was seized in a drug raid. China on Friday insisted it is up to the US to “create necessary conditions” for anti-drugs cooperation. Photo: AP

Published: 4:33am, 8 Jul 2023Updated: 5:58am, 8 Jul 2023

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday called on dozens of countries to work together to combat synthetic drugs, but China – facing blame in Washington over an addiction epidemic – denounced the effort.

Inaugurating a new US-led “coalition” on the scourge, Blinken told ministers from more than 80 countries that the United States – where nearly 110,000 Americans died last year from drug overdoses, mostly from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids – was “a canary in the coal mine.”

“Having saturated the United States market, transnational criminal enterprises are turning elsewhere to expand their profits,” Blinken said.

“If we don’t act together with fierce urgency, more cities around the world will bear the catastrophic costs” witnessed in the United States, he said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Photo: AFP

Americans’ addiction soared starting in the 1990s as painkillers were aggressively marketed by profit-seeking pharmaceutical companies, with a disproportionate effect on veterans from US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.