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Interpol head warns fentanyl scourge could hit Europe

Sep 20, 2024, 6:41am EDT
politicsEurope
Satish Kumar/Reuters
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Interpol Secretary-General Jürgen Stock warned that Europe faces a rising threat from fentanyl and other synthetic drugs, even as overdose deaths in the US are on the decline.

Europe has largely avoided the fentanyl scourge that has wreaked havoc in the US, but Stock said that he’s been telling European capitals to be on higher alert for the past year.

“At the beginning, I quite often heard, ‘no we are not that concerned in Europe’ … That has been changing,” Stock told a small group of reporters in Washington. “What we expect is that synthetic drugs will be perhaps dominating the markets anyway in the years to come.”

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The US has attacked the issue by setting up a global coalition to tackle synthetic drugs, while separately pushing China to stamp out precursors used to make fentanyl.

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