America's drug crisis

Ylva Johansson/Fentanyl tablets (Archive images) TT  

 

America's drug crisis  

Johansson: The EU needs to be ready for a new fentanyl boom  

 

Europe needs to prepare for a fentanyl crisis similar to the one in the US. This is what Ylva Johansson, the EU's Home Affairs Commissioner, told Politico.  

 

The call comes after she spoke with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a visit to New York in connection with the UN General Assembly. According to Johansson, the US wants to warn the EU about what is to come.  

 

- Blinken described it as "either a problem with synthetic drugs is something you have, or it is a problem you will have", she says in the interview.  

 

Of the more than 100,000 Americans who died from overdoses, more than 66 percent were linked to fentanyl, the BBC reports. At the moment, above all, cannabis and cocaine are the drugs that cause the most concern in the EU, writes Politico. In 2017, the use of nasal sprays with fentanyl culminated in Sweden, leading to over a hundred deaths.