United States President Donald Trump has claimed that illegal fentanyl, sold on the streets, is one of the main reasons for the trade tariffs he imposed on Canada, Mexico and China this week.
Regarding the first two, neighboring countries, he said that he has decided to suspend the imposition of planned tariffs for one month, after last-minute negotiations with them.
In a statement issued by the White House, the synthetic opioid is blamed for causing a "national emergency," for which, according to it, strong measures should be taken.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid used for pain relief and anesthesia. It is considered to be 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine.
The WHO has fentanyl on its list of essential medicines, and it is also on the list of narcotic drugs registered for circulation in Kosovo , according to the Kosovo Agency for Medical Products and Devices.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , there are two types of fentanyl: pharmaceutical and illegally created.
Medical fentanyl, according to these centers, is produced by pharmaceutical companies and is used in surgeries or to treat severe pain, mainly in cancer patients. It can be in the form of patches or tablets.
Meanwhile, illegally produced fentanyl is mostly found in powder form, or crushed into tablets. It can be smoked, snorted, injected, or swallowed.
“Fentanyl and chemically similar analogues [including carfentanil, acetifentanil, butyrfentanyl and furnailfentanyl] are associated with increased opioid overdose deaths. There is evidence that drug traffickers may be adding fentanyl to increase the potency of their products [such as heroin] and selling fentanyl in pill form and making it look like regular drugs. As a result, many users test positive for fentanyl and other analogues without knowing where they got the substance,” the WHO website states .
Fentanyl kills tens of thousands of people in the US every year, and the country has declared the use of opioid drugs an epidemic.
Over the past decade, fentanyl has rapidly become one of the deadliest drugs in the US, according to the Associated Press, which cited data from drug enforcement authorities.
In 2022, two-thirds of overdoses – almost 74,000 cases – were caused by synthetic opioids, mainly fentanyl.
The substance appeared on the American black market in 2014, according to Reuters. Initially, it was mainly shipped from China, through the mail, until 2019, when Beijing, under US pressure, classified it as a controlled substance.
At that time, the US Postal Service increased monitoring, including electronic tracking of data on more international shipments, and investigated transactions on illegal online marketplaces.
Since then, Mexican criminal organizations have taken over the market and become the main traffickers of fentanyl in the US.
Trafficking in this substance is mentioned 12 times in the executive order signed last week by President Donald Trump, imposing tariffs on several countries, with the aim, among other things, of stopping trafficking in this substance. This substance has been identified as a national problem in the US.
Through this executive order, the US has accused China of not taking the necessary measures to stop "shipments of chemical substances used for drug production to certain criminal cartels."
Mexico has been accused of providing "safe haven to cartels involved in the production and transportation of dangerous narcotics, which have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans from overdoses."
Meanwhile, the allegations against Canada relate to the failure to prevent "the presence of Mexican cartels operating laboratories for synthetic fentanyl and nitazine in Canada."
All three countries have denied the US accusations. China has said that "we support the US on the fentanyl issue", but has assessed that ultimately "fentanyl is America's problem".
Mexico has asked the US to limit the trafficking of illegal weapons into Mexico, which the state's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, says are fueling cartel violence.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has dismissed the White House's claims, claiming that less than 1 percent of the fentanyl entering the US originates from Canada.
Although the use of fentanyl in the United States is being considered a national problem, as this country is taking steps to combat the trafficking of this substance, there is no data in Kosovo that any cases of its use have been recorded.
Safet Blakaj, director of the "Labirint" Addiction Counseling and Treatment Center in Kosovo, said that, although they have no data that there are cases of this drug use in Kosovo, this center has begun to take measures.
"We have no information that anyone in Kosovo is using this drug. But we are trying to do some surveillance, and when we test our clients, we are also including a test for fentanyl, to see if it is being used through other drugs," Blakaj told Radio Free Europe.
The Kosovo Police, until the moment of publication of this text, have not responded to Radio Free Europe's questions about whether they have encountered cases of smuggling of this drug, or whether it is sold on the black market in the country.
Blakaj said that, regarding medicinal fentanyl, although it is permitted in Kosovo, his center has looked into whether it is available in pharmacies, and whether access to them is easy, but has not come across any recently.
"These are hard to find in pharmacies. We've looked. There used to be some patches that are placed on the skin. But now we can't find any," he said.
Blakaj said that, as far as his center has information, there are no cases of non-medical fentanyl use in neighboring countries: Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, and North Macedonia.
He added that he fears that this substance has a tendency to come to Kosovo, mixing with other drugs trafficked in Kosovo, such as heroin, so he called for vigilance, as he considered it the most powerful substance created so far.
But in Bulgaria, the chairwoman of the board of the Center for Humane Policy and head of the center for support for people with addiction, "Pink House", Yulia Georgieva, wrote on Facebook on January 28 that according to drug users, fentanyl is being sold on the black market, likely mixed with other substances.
"Even the smallest amount can be deadly, and traffickers are not able to measure the dose properly," Georgieva said.
In Bulgaria, for the first time in 2023, there were reports of ten deaths that occurred within a short period of time in Varna. According to independent drug rehabilitation centers, these deaths were caused by fentanyl.
At the time, the Bulgarian Interior Ministry said that the presence of this substance was sporadic in Bulgaria, and that most cases involved the theft of substances from legal shipments of substances for medical use./ REL (A2 Televizion)
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