Undersecretary of State Mantovano at the 68th session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs

On behalf of the Italian Government, Undersecretary of State to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers Alfredo Mantovano attended the 68th session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) at the Vienna International Center today, and delivered an address during the plenary assembly.

Some of the main points from Undersecretary of State Mantovano’s plenary session address are provided below:
New technologies, especially digital, have made it possible to create parallel markets to those of the ‘traditional’ drug trade: thanks in particular to the dark web, supply and demand meet, with money moving anonymously through cryptocurrencies, without the intermediation of banking institutions and with artificial intelligence playing a key role. Another new and alarming aspect is the fact that the so-called ‘over-the-counter’ web has numerous companies specialising in import/export, which act as trading platforms for the substances. This is a worrying qualitative leap that points to the expansion of drug trafficking, even at lower levels of criminal organisation. All these innovations are having an impact on the methods used to combat drug trafficking, reducing the effectiveness of some traditional investigative techniques.

The fact that drug trafficking is not in crisis is reflected in the figures for all the main indicators: the total amount of drugs seized is increasing and the number of criminal ‘cartels’ that manage to play a major role in the global drug trade is growing. Any effort to combat this is, however, doomed to failure unless we address what Pier Paolo Pasolini defined as a ‘cultural vacuum’, understood as a loss of principles and horizons.

Undersecretary of State Mantovano went on to address the side event ‘National strategies to address synthetic drugs’, highlighting that Italy is on the front line in the fight against all drugs and was one of the first countries to develop a national plan to prevent the abuse of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. This plan involves all the main players and is divided into two main parts: prevention and emergency management. It covers, inter alia: controls to prevent the diversion of medicinal substances; rapid identification tools for synthetic drugs; forensic toxicology laboratories; awareness raising among judicial authorities; standardisation of laboratory protocols; regular coordination meetings; cooperation of international agencies and all partners. 

Undersecretary of State Mantovano also said: “From the point of view of illicit producers, fentanyl and similar substances are preferable to traditional drugs: they have low production costs, are cheap, highly addictive and easy to manufacture […]. The production of synthetic drugs on the massive scale we have seen in recent years is only possible thanks to the extensive chemical industries of sufficiently large and complex economies. This means that drugs no longer come exclusively from Latin American or Southeast Asian countries”.

“Analysis of major cryptocurrency platforms (Elliptic, TRM and Chainalysis) has uncovered several companies supplying fentanyl precursors. […] Seventeen of these companies have even publicly offered to supply fentanyl, despite the Chinese government’s 2019 ban. Other companies offer a range of chemicals, including synthetic opioid precursors, amphetamines and methamphetamines. These operators’ cryptocurrency wallets […] receive tens of millions of dollars through thousands of transactions”.