President Biden hosted the Summit of the Global Coalition to Address Synthetic Drugs on September 24, 2024, during the 79th Session of the UN General Assembly. Since its inception in July 2023, the Global Coalition has grown to include 163 countries and 15 international organizations working together to disrupt the supply chain for fentanyl and other synthetic drugs; detect emerging drug threats; and prevent and treat through effective public health interventions.

With the Summit as a motivating force, 11 Coalition countries – Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, India, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom – announced new initiatives that will advance the work of the Coalition, including efforts to disrupt the supply chain of fentanyl and enhance public health interventions.

These 11 countries also signed a Coalition Pledge agreeing to take additional actions to regulate all relevant drugs and precursor chemicals, take needed steps to fill gaps in their own domestic authorities, expand public-private partnerships to more effectively combat the supply chain for illicit fentanyl, develop mechanisms to monitor real-time data on trends in illicit drug use, and expand access to treatment. At the Summit, President Biden called on all other Coalition countries to likewise sign this pledge.

Officially launched by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken through a virtual Ministerial on July 7, 2023, the Global Coalition to Address Synthetic Drug Threats is a U.S.-led international effort to combat the threats posed by the presence of synthetic drugs. Globally, synthetic drug threats are on the rise. Traffickers are expanding shipment routes, manufacturers are getting more creative in finding the ingredients and equipment to make synthetic drugs, criminal groups are taking advantage of weak spots in data collection and, all around the world, public health suffers due to synthetic drug use. The Secretary’s Global Coalition to Address Synthetic Drug Threats confronts these challenges. The Coalition is intended to produce action and results in a short period of time, speeding up the global response to the rise in synthetic drugs threats. The Coalition convenes through Working Group and Sub-Working Group meetings on a monthly basis. To ensure meetings are accessible across the world and breadth of languages, meetings are held in East Sessions and West Sessions and offer interpretation in English, Arabic, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

Synthetic Drugs pose a growing security and public health challenge. Illicitly manufactured synthetic drugs such as fentanyl, tramadol, cathinones, synthetic cannabinoids, methamphetamine, captagon, MDMA, are often more potent – and more lethal – than plant-based drugs like cocaine or heroin. They can be made anywhere with widely available chemicals and equipment and shipped in small quantities undetected for high profits. Synthetic drugs threaten all regions of the world and call for a global coalition to respond.

For additional detail and questions, please reach out to SyntheticsCoalition [at] state [dot] gov (SyntheticsCoalition[at]state[dot]gov)