President Donald Trump, on September 15, submitted to the United States Congress a list of 23 “major drug-transit or major illicit-drug-producing countries”. India was on the list, along with four others from its neighbourhood – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Myanmar, and China. Earlier, on March 25, the Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community identified India, along with China, as a ‘state actor’ directly or indirectly enabling the drug traffickers.

Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid used as an analgesic and abused as a narcotic substance, has emerged as yet another irritant in the bilateral relations between New Delhi and Washington, in addition to Trump’s tariff war, his repeated claims about brokering the India-Pakistan truce on May 10 and his bonhomie with the civil and military

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