Kathmandu: A top Indian official has said that Donald Trump blaming India and China for America’s fentanyl crisis is unwarranted.
In News18.com, Dr G Shreekumar Menon, a retired officer of the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) and the former director-general of the National Academy of Customs, Indirect Taxes & Narcotics, wrote that the US has failed to appreciate India and China for taking proactive domestic measures to address the illegal manufacture, spillovers from legitimate production into the black market, and export of fentanyl precursor chemicals. “On 1 May 2019, China became the first country to officially control all forms of fentanyl as a class of drugs. India’s first set of export controls on fentanyl precursors was put in place as early as February 2018, and by January 2020, the strictest controls were imposed on the export of most fentanyl precursor chemicals,” he wrote. “India and China now have some of the strictest drug control laws globally.”
Menon has stated the creation of a US-India Counter-Narcotics Working Group in 2020 to focus on fentanyl and other opioids as a noteworthy bilateral framework between India and the US. He has appreciated the US-China Bilateral Drug Intelligence Working Group and the Counter-Narcotics Working Group for engaging on the issue. “The trafficking of synthetic drugs like fentanyl is an upshot of a new global drugs economy where Transnational Criminal Organisations (TCOs) have exploited global shipping networks, trade infrastructure, and technologies such as cryptocurrencies and the “dark net” to create new distribution channels and expand markets,” he wrote.
Menon has also criticized the report of the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment (ATA) of the US Intelligence Community, published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which has placed India on the same level as China in the supply of precursor chemicals used by drug cartels to manufacture the opioid fentanyl.
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