Mexico’s head of detectives acknowledged Tuesday that the country is a “champion” in fentanyl production, appearing to contradict past statements by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
López Obrador has in the past vehemently denied that fentanyl is produced in Mexico, saying Mexican cartels are only pressing it into pills or adding the finishing touches.
But Felipe de Jesus Gallo, head of Mexico’s Criminal Investigation Agency, said that since the 1990s, “Mexico has been a champion producer of methamphetamine and now fentanyl.” He spoke at the US-Mexico Synthetic Drugs Conference in Mexico City.
Experts agree that cartels in Mexico use precursor chemicals from China and India to produce the synthetic opioid and smuggle it into the United States, where about 70,000 people die from overdoses each year.
Although fentanyl is not widely abused in Mexico, methamphetamine addiction is common.
Gallo said Mexican cartels have established industrial production of methamphetamine in many states across the country and are now exporting the drug around the world.
“Believe me, methamphetamine production has become industrialized and it’s not just limited to the mountains anymore,” Gallo said. “Now we expect to see (drug) laboratories not only in the mountains of Sinaloa and Sonora, but also in Hidalgo, Puebla, and also in Jalisco.”
He was apparently referring to the thousands of drug laboratories discovered in previous years in the hills and bushes around Culiacan, the capital of the northern state of Sinaloa. These clandestine rural production sites often consisted of modest, makeshift laboratories covered with tree branches and tarps.
Now the methamphetamine trade has become so lucrative and sophisticated that Mexican meth is exported to as far away as Hong Kong or Australia, and cartels have found ways to avoid detection of their drug profits.
“Business models have become very innovative or as old and outdated as barter; “I’ll trade you precursor chemicals for methamphetamine” to avoid leaving a money trail, Gallo said.
There is no doubt that drug production in Mexico continues on a massive scale.
In February, the Mexican Navy seized more than 45 tons methamphetamine in the largest drug laboratory found under the current administration. The laboratory was located in Quiriego, a town in a remote part of the northern border state of Sonora.
The 91,000 pounds (41,310 kg) of methamphetamine recovered was more than half of the 162,000 pounds of the drug seized by Mexico this year.
Fentanyl production is also huge, although because it is a more potent drug, the volume is smaller.
A year ago, soldiers captured more than half a million fentanyl tablets in Culiacan, in what the army at the time called the largest synthetic drug laboratory to date.
Soldiers found nearly 630,000 pills that appeared to contain fentanyl, the Army said. They also reported seizing 282 pounds (128 kg) of powdered fentanyl and approximately 220 pounds (100 kg) of suspected methamphetamine.
López Obrador, who took office on December 1, 2018, also claims that Mexicans are culturally immune to drug addiction.