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Over the past decade, the United States has been devastated by fentanyl—a synthetic opioid said to be 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. The synthetic opioid crisis, in which fentanyl is central, has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and, at one time, killed one person in America every five minutes.
It might seem like a purely American problem, but policymakers have warned that synthetic opioids may be coming to Europe. Speaking at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs in March, US secretar y of state Antony Blinken said the US had been a “canary in the coal mine” when it came to fentanyl. “It hit us hard, it hit us first, but unfortunately not last,” he said. “And we can see its ravages taking hold in other countries.”