Mexico seeks China's help on fentanyl, complains of 'rude' US pressure

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has said that he had asked his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to help curb trafficking of the often-deadly opioid fentanyl to the United States while also complaining of "rude" US pressure to curb the drug trade.

President Lopez Obrador has previously said that fentanyl is America's problem and is caused by "a lack of hugs" in US families. On Tuesday he doubled down on those themes, but went further, venting in a letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping about "rude threats" from US legislators over the drug trade.

"Unjustly, they are blaming us for problems that in large measure have to do with their loss of values, their welfare crisis," Lopez Obrador wrote to Xi in the letter. "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."

The letter brought up China's exports of fentanyl precursors, and asked him to help stop shipments of chemicals that Mexican cartels import from China.

"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," the Mexican president wrote.

China has taken some steps to limit fentanyl exports, but mislabeled or harder-to-detect precursor chemicals continue to pour out of Chinese factories.

Lopez Obrador's appeal follows calls from Republican senators in the United States to designate Mexican drug cartels foreign terrorist organisations and even send troops to fight them.

According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration, criminal groups ship chemicals from China to Mexico where they are used to produce fentanyl that is smuggled across the US border.

In his letter, Lopez Obrador described the proposal to deploy US soldiers in Mexico as "an unacceptable threat to our sovereignty."

READ MORE: 'Lack of hugs and embraces' behind US fentanyl deaths

Obrador doubles down on family remarks

Lopez Obrador has previously said that fentanyl is America's problem and is caused by "a lack of hugs" in US families and broken family values in the American society. 

He doubled down on his advice to strengthen family values in the United States. 

"I would tell them for example, to keep their children at home longer, don't kick them out of the house, keep them [at home] for two or three years more," Lopez Obrador said during a news conference.

Over the last week, he has fixated on press reports stating that the US National Basketball Association had offered in talks with the players' union to stop testing or penalising players for using marijuana.

The Mexican president took that as evidence of US social and moral decay, even though Mexico has legalised the growing of marijuana for personal and medical use.

"We are seeing the the basketball league has authorised players to smoke marijuana," Lopez Obrador said. "How can that be? Imagine, in sports! It shouldn’t be allowed anywhere."

Most illegal fentanyl is pressed by Mexican cartels into counterfeit pills made to look like other medications like Xanax, oxycodone or Percocet, or mixed into other drugs, including heroin and cocaine.

He claimed that having close-knit families has allowed Mexico to avoid a fentanyl crisis.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid trafficked by Mexican cartels that has been blamed for about 70,000 overdose deaths per year in the United States.

Many people who die of overdoses in the United States do not know they are taking fentanyl.

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.

READ MORE: Fentanyl is US problem; broken family values behind addiction rise: Mexico