2023-07-29 21:03:15
The Mexican port city of Manzanillo, with around 160,000 inhabitants, has developed into one of the most important hubs for ingredients required for fentanyl production in recent years. This was reported by the Financial Times (“FT”). One of Mexico’s largest ports handles 30 percent of the country’s imports.
In the approximately 9,500 containers that arrive daily, the small amounts of chemicals needed to manufacture fentanyl would go unnoticed and undetected among the vast quantities of goods delivered, such as clothing and milk powder, the newspaper wrote. In addition, many of the ingredients might also be used for legal purposes, such as even fentanyl, which is actually used as a pain reliever.
AP/Alameda County Sheriff’s Office Again and once more large quantities of fentanyl are seized in the USA, as here in an illegal laboratory
Deliveries often go undetected, violence and, above all, corruption dominate day-to-day business in customs and ports. In addition, according to a calculation by the Rand Corporation, five tons of fentanyl would easily fit in one of the usual containers for an annual requirement in the USA. It’s not regarding looking for a needle in a haystack, it’s regarding finding the eye of the needle in a haystack, Peter Reuter from the University of Maryland told the FT.
Production unobtrusively possible
According to “FT”, the ingredients are brought from the port to northern Mexico, mixed and then filled into capsules or pressed as pills. The advantage from the point of view of the producers: No large cultivation areas are required, such as for opium poppies and cannabis, the growth of which also depends on the weather. The production of the fentanyl itself can apparently take place inconspicuously in apartments and also in urban areas.
However, thousands of jobs will also be lost in this way – instead of the corresponding number of farmers and farm workers, only a few hundred drug cookers who brew fentanyl in the back room, calculated an expert Archyde.com. Heroin production in particular has declined significantly with the triumph of fentanyl, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Farmers lose livelihoods
According to the NGO Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, the farmers who have been deprived of their livelihood now have only a fraction of the income they had during the heroin boom in the USA in 2015-2017. The rumor is that drugs are the most profitable product in the world and immune to any recession, but the NGO says there is a real economic crisis in this area right now.
Archyde.com/Alexandre Meneghini The actual producers of the drug are usually at the bottom of the cartel hierarchy
But the new producers don’t get rich either, they say: In a TV report in Mexico, young men who bottled fentanyl in the mountains of Sinaloa in western Mexico recently had their say. According to the statement, the two fill 21,000 capsules with fentanyl every week, for which they would get $330. It’s not a lot of money and it’s a monotonous job, they were quoted as saying, but there’s no more money to be made anywhere else. The finished portioned drugs are then smuggled into the USA and distributed there.
Corruption and violence dominate the port
In the port, two drug cartels Sinaloa and Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) fight for supremacy, and they are not squeamish regarding it. Within two years, four customs employees alone were killed. The mayor of the city of Manzanillo, Griselda Martinez, narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in 2019.
She has been separated from her family for four years, guarded by a dozen armed men. “It shouldn’t be like that,” Martinez told the newspaper. “It should never be normal.” People keep disappearing and graves with dozens of bodies are discovered in Mexico.
The Mexican head of state Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is therefore not only under pressure at home, the USA is also demanding corresponding steps once morest the drug cartels. In April, the US judiciary indicted a number of leading members of the Sinaloa cartel for drug smuggling. Among the 28 accused were four of the sons of US-imprisoned drug lord “El Chapo” Guzman. 29 people were killed in the arrest of a son in Mexico – including 10 military personnel.
Archyde.com/Kevin Lamarque The opioid crisis is also a major problem for US politics
According to the US Drug Administration (DEA), the drug mafia obtains most of the raw materials for production from China – which also causes discord between the USA and China. At the end of 2022, the DEA calculated that the amount of fentanyl seized that year alone might theoretically have killed all of the approximately 333 million inhabitants of the USA.
Fentanyl 50 times stronger than heroin
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin. Pharmaceutical grade fentanyl is approved for the treatment of severe pain. Illegally manufactured fentanyl is trafficked for its heroin-like effects and is often mixed with heroin or other drugs such as cocaine, or compressed into fake prescription pills.
Archyde.com/Amr Alfiky In the USA, like here in New York, there are special kits for testing drugs for fentanyl
For years, the USA has been struggling with an opoid crisis, which was recently intensified by the pandemic. Originally, fentanyl was prescribed too often as a painkiller, which resulted in numerous addicts, some of whom then switched to other drugs. However, because it is significantly cheaper to produce, fentanyl is now often used to cut heroin, for example, but since it is much more potent, it is also easier to overdose.
Fentanyl overdose is currently the leading cause of death in US citizens between the ages of 18 and 45. Numerous celebrities have fallen victim to toxic cocktails and accidental overdoses, including Prince and rapper Cooolio. According to the UN, fentanyl was involved in the majority of around 90,000 deaths in connection with opioid overdoses in the USA in 2021, and by 2022 it was already well over 100,000.
UN alarmed over development
In its most recent annual report, the UN expressed alarm at the worldwide spread of synthetic drugs. The UNODC warned in Vienna at the end of June that the “inexpensive, fast and simple production” of synthetic drugs had drastically changed drug markets around the world. Fentanyl has “radically changed opioid use” in the United States.
The expected “drastic decline” in poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, which is important for heroin production, due to a ban by the Taliban might also promote “a reorientation towards the production of synthetic drugs”. The region is already one of the main producers of methamphetamine (crystal meth), the world’s dominant synthetic drug. According to the UN, more than 296 million people were using drugs worldwide in 2021, a 23 percent increase in ten years.
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