-OpEd-

MEXICO CITY — An unstoppable force is about to smash into an immovable object. The fentanyl crisis in the United States has become, beyond the reach of any single election, a vital threat to its society. And while the key to the problem, as with all narcotics abuse, is around consumption, Mexico can hardly absolve itself of responsibility when the fentanyl is sourced here. Moreover, it is connected to our own, massive crime problem.

All of this means that there is yet another reason for authorities on both sides of the border to help each other.

I am reminded of Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, set in the French Revolution. Dickens mocks the French revolutionaries who claim to be fighting for liberty while decapitating all and sundry.

Likewise there's no squaring safe streets in Mexico with a drug epidemic next door: drugs like fentanyl finance the cartels that terrorize Mexican cities and neighborhoods. Or put another way: Drugs sold in the United States pay for the guns they fire at Mexicans!

Not surprisingly perhaps, given his irrepressible optimism, Mexico's president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, rejects both components of the problem. He says no fentanyl is made in Mexico and crime here is under check, which would mean people are deluded in both countries.