The government had the National Assembly vote on Monday evening for a measure to authorize customs to seize chemical substances likely to be used in the manufacture of synthetic drugs, in order to avoid the “ravaging” that fentanyl is doing to the States. -United. Powerful synthetic opioid, fentanyl is behind a dramatic increase in fatal overdoses in the United States
During a debate on French customs reform, Budget Minister Gabriel Attal mentioned a visit a few months ago to the United States where officials “unanimously” alerted him to the “dramatic ravages” of fentanyl. “We know that it is a synthetic opioid” made “from raw materials of products not prohibited”, he developed.
“We don’t want that to happen” in France
The government therefore wants to transpose a “provision that exists in European law”. It must allow customs officers to seize “unclassified chemical precursors”, as soon as “sufficient evidence” suggests a “link” between these substances and “the illicit manufacture of narcotics”.
In 2020, “it is 350 drug laboratories” which “have been dismantled at European level. In France, it is for the moment quite artisanal, it is what we call kitchen laboratories, “Kitchen Lab” ”. But “we are starting to see industrial-scale laboratories for this type of drug, especially in the Netherlands and now a little in Spain. We don’t want that to happen” in France, insisted Gabriel Attal.
Explosion of overdoses in the United States
The amendment was passed unanimously even if the oppositions deplored that it was introduced at the last moment in the Assembly, during the examination in first reading of a customs reform which has yet to continue its parliamentary course. with the Senate.
Manufactured in the laboratory, at lower costs than heroin, fentanyl has flooded the American drug market for years and caused around 70,000 deaths by overdose in 2022 out of a total of 106,000 in the United States, a record.