Secretary Antony J. Blinken at the 67th Session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs Side Event “Protecting Global Public Health and Safety: Mounting a Unified International Response to Synthetic Drugs and Their Precursors”

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Thank you.  Good afternoon.  Thank you very much.  (Applause.)  Thank you.  Thank you.

It is genuinely an honor to join all of you as the first American secretary of state to participate in the high-level session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs.  And I am joined today by the most senior delegation the United States Government has ever sent to this gathering.  Agencies, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Justice, Drug Policy, Drug Enforcement, everyone is here, and it, simply put, reflects the importance that President Biden places on addressing the shared challenge of synthetic drugs and the whole-of-government approach that we brought to meeting the challenge.

We’ve come to Vienna to continue to sound the alarm – to sound the alarm around the dangers of synthetic drugs and to rally a more coordinated and vigorous global response, and here’s why.  First, every region is experiencing a dramatic increase in synthetic drug use, addiction, and overdose deaths, from tramadol in Africa, to fake Captagon pills in the Middle East, to ketamine and amphetamine in Asia.

Now these are far from the only harms.  Criminal organizations that manufacture and traffic synthetic drugs are also extorting local businesses, corrupting politicians, security forces, trafficking women and children.  Second, this is a problem that no one country can effectively solve alone.  In an interconnected world, criminal organizations quickly exploit weak links to make, to move, and to market their increasingly potent and dangerous synthetic drugs.  Chemical precursors manufactured in one country transit through others, get to a third where they’re synthesized, and then come into the United States or other countries, hitting our streets, killing our people.  So we have to work together to get at every link in this chain.

Finally, no country, no government, no institution has a monopoly on good ideas.  Innovative solutions are being tried, they’re being tested everywhere, and the more we can bring these ideas together, the more effective each of us is going to be.  So we have to do more to learn from one another and work with one another.  And that’s the focus of today’s gathering.

The good news is we already have so many of the tools that we need to tackle this challenge thanks to decades of work by leaders in government, in multilateral organizations, in civil society, including right here at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which has the authority to place synthetic drugs and their precursors under international control.  The UN Office on Drugs and Crime, also based here in Vienna, has worked with experts around the globe to develop a synthetic drug strategy and practical toolkits for action.  The International Narcotics Control Board has created platforms that allow governments, law enforcement, justice officials around the world to exchange information in real time about legitimate chemical and pharmaceutical shipments as well as suspected trafficking incidents.

We’ve also created new tools to foster greater global awareness and cooperation on this issue.  Last July, we launched the Global Coalition to Address Synthetic Drug Threats.  We started with about 80 partner countries.  It’s now grown to 151 countries, 14 international organizations and counting.  From the outset, the coalition is focused on three main lines of effort: preventing the illicit manufacture and trafficking of synthetic drugs and precursors, detecting emerging trends and threats, promoting public health solutions.  In the short space of time since July when the coalition came together, we’ve held 70 working group sessions with more than 1,500 participants, including public health experts, law enforcement officers, diplomats, civil society leaders.  In all, the working sessions generated more than 120 proposals for programs, for policies, for actions, nearly all of them now searchable on the coalition’s website.

And let me just give you a couple of quick examples.  Training countries on how to safely dispose of seized precursor chemicals and how to collect evidence from clandestine labs that can be used to prosecute criminal groups; deepening awareness among and coordination with private sector partners, particularly online platforms and the manufacturing and shipping sectors; funding laboratories and trainings for experts in countries that lack the capacity to analyze new synthetic drugs; identifying better treatments for addiction to stimulants, the most widely used synthetic drug with some 80 billion users annually.

Now we’re bringing the coalition to a new stage.  We’re asking every member of the coalition and every government, every institution, every organization here today to make concrete commitments to address the crisis.  That could be passing new laws and regulations, implementing new policies, funding new research, or acting on any one of 120 initiatives recommended by the coalition’s working groups.  And because countries have different needs, different capacities, different resources, we will work to marshal support to help countries that have the will to take action but lack the resources to do it.

Here’s what the United States will do to support these collective efforts.  In September, we committed $100 million to fund global efforts aimed at tackling synthetic drug threats.  Given the ongoing urgency of this threat, today we’re committing to with our Congress to significantly expand that support with an additional $170 million next year.  We’ll continue to put more resources than ever before into addressing the challenge at home, such as our efforts to significantly increase access to Naloxone and to prevent overdose deaths as part of a broader health-centric approach for people who use drugs.

I mentioned a short while ago that for the first time, the resources we’re dedicating to dealing with the demand side will surpass those that we’re dedicating to addressing the supply side.  We are stepping up to our responsibilities.  Over the last three years, President Biden has programmed $170 billion to counter narcotic threats.  And again, so much of that is at home – public awareness, public health, prevention, treatment.

We’ll leverage all of these tools to target key drivers of the challenge, such as the request we put forward internationally to control two additional precursors of synthetic opioids.  And here, we simply have to make sure that we’re not only keeping up, but hopefully seeing around the curve, because we know that even as we control ingredients that go into making synthetic opioids, those engaged in that practice are finding new ways, new combinations, new chemicals, and even as we control one, something else may come to market.  So we have to stay ahead of this.

We’ll look to all of you to hold us to our own commitments, and we’ll do the same, because we can’t afford to come up short.  I have the honor and pleasure in just a moment to hand it over to Executive Director Waly and to Justice Tettey and also our distinguished panel.  But let me just in closing remind you why we’re here.

The World Health Organization estimates that in 2019, approximately 600,000 people worldwide died of drug overdoses, the vast majority from synthetic drugs.  That’s the most recent year for which we have that overall tally.  Today, that number is almost certainly much higher, and let me just speak to my own country for a minute.  We’ve seen the scourge of synthetic drugs touch virtually every town, every city, every state in the United States.  More than 40 percent of the American people know someone who died from an opioid overdose, the number one killer of Americans between the ages of 18 and 45 is fentanyl.

So the impact this has had cannot be overstated, and on something like fentanyl, we’ve been something of a canary in the coal mine.  It hit us hard, it hit us first, but now we’re seeing, as markets are saturated, criminal enterprises trying to make markets in other parts of the world.  And so what came to us one day, alas, may be coming to you another.  And of course there are many other synthetic drugs that are already afflicting so many countries in this room.

Those numbers are almost hard to digest, so I’d ask you to think for just a moment, not so much of the numbers but what they represent, of all the losses that they contain, all the pain experienced by loved ones and friends, all the empty seats left in classrooms and at dinner tables – or in businesses, places of worship – all the contributions those hundreds of thousands of people might have made to our shared world if they were still alive.

Now, think about all the people who will live longer, healthier, more secure lives with greater opportunity if we achieve what we’ve set out to do, if we come together to surmount the profound threats posed by synthetic drugs, if we prevent more citizens, more communities from being consumed by this crisis.  That’s why we’re all here.  That is why it is so important that we succeed and succeed together.

I thank you so very much and it’s now my honor and pleasure to hand the podium over to UNODC Director Waly.  Welcome.  (Applause.)

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