Chester Sam­bra­no

Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne has sig­nalled this coun­try's com­mit­ment to com­bat the grow­ing risk of il­le­gal syn­thet­ic drugs.

Dr Browne par­tic­i­pat­ed in a vir­tu­al Min­is­te­r­i­al Meet­ing host­ed by Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State, An­tho­ny Blinken, to launch the Glob­al Coali­tion Against Syn­thet­ic Drug Threats on Ju­ly 7.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, the meet­ing at­tract­ed over fifty-eight (58) coun­tries and 10 re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al or­ga­ni­za­tions, that fo­cus on il­le­gal drugs and as­so­ci­at­ed is­sues.

It said the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to work with in­ter­est­ed coun­tries to re­spond to the grow­ing se­cu­ri­ty and pub­lic health chal­lenge of syn­thet­ic drugs.

The Min­istry ex­plained that Il­lic­it­ly-man­u­fac­tured syn­thet­ic drugs such as fen­tanyl, tra­madol, cathi­nones, syn­thet­ic cannabi­noids, metham­phet­a­mine, cap­ta­gon, MD­MA, and ke­t­a­mine pose a com­plex pub­lic health and se­cu­ri­ty threat that all stake­hold­ers - law en­force­ment, reg­u­la­to­ry, com­mer­cial and pub­lic health en­ti­ties - around the world must work to­geth­er to ad­dress.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, Min­is­ter Browne de­liv­ered this coun­try’s Na­tion­al State­ment, reaf­firm­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s com­mit­ment to work­ing close­ly with the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and all part­ners of the Glob­al Coali­tion, to com­bat the grave and grow­ing risk of il­le­gal syn­thet­ic drugs to the health and safe­ty of peo­ple around the world.

The Min­is­ter al­so ac­knowl­edged that the il­le­gal use of syn­thet­ic drugs is

slow­ly in­creas­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go among cit­i­zens and in­di­cat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment is work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to put mea­sures in place to counter these chal­lenges, in­clud­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of The Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tem Trinidad and To­ba­go (EWS-TT) Work­ing Group.