A senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. will speak about the global synthetic drug trade late Monday afternoon, February 5, at Missouri State University.
Vanda Felbab-Brown said she’ll discuss how the global drug trade is changing in the way that it’s affecting the U.S. and how that, in turn, changes U.S. relations with Latin America.
"With the rise of the opioid epidemic and its different mutations but essentially relentless augmentation and, particularly, the emergency of synthetic opioids — fentanyl as the dominant and most lethal drug in the U.S. market, this has had widespread implications," she said.
The vast majority of synthetic drugs, she said, including fentanyl and fake oxycontin pills, are coming from Mexico where they’re produced. But, according to Felbab-Brown, the chemicals from which those drugs are produced come from China and, to a lesser extent, India.
She said, for decades, the U.S. has focused on Latin American and the southern cone in its war against drugs, often countries "in which there was a disproportionate power relationship. The United States was a far more powerful country," and she said the U.S. could exercise great leverage over them.
But, now, the primary sources of the problem are the United States' peer rival, China, and another country the U.S. seeks to cultivate as a peer partner, India, said Felbab-Brown.
And she said synthetic drugs are "very much changing the priorities, issues and engagement of the U.S. with Latin America. Now, that is a country that is at the very core of our agenda in a difficult way, intermixed with migration and with Mexico."
Her talk, "The Global Synthetic Drugs Revolution: Its Geopolitical Implications and Impact across Latin America,” will start at 5 p.m. Monday in Karls Hall, Room 101 on the MSU Springfield campus. It’s free and open to the public.
