Mexico's Synthetic Drug Problem is Meth, Not Fentanyl.
Fentanyl consumption may be more of a U.S than Mexican problem, but the same cannot be said of methamphetamine.
I met her in Tijuana, Mexico, in a harm reduction center for drug users. I cannot remember her name, but I do remember her story. She, a Mexican woman who by that point was in her late 40’s, had been addicted to methamphetamine for years, and she told me that she simply couldn’t get off it.
I met another woman who was African American, and she told me her tale of years of drug use. She had come over the border to score meth, and she said she wasn’t planning on going home, because “cristal,” as meth is called on Mexico’s terribly mean streets, was cheaper this side of the international line.
For just 70 pesos, which is less than five bucks, users can smoke enough to keep them high for some eight hours. At the time, the center Prevencasa was also dealing with a wave of opioid overdoses related to fentanyl in the border city - a trend that has sadly continued unabated. But what was an equally important headline during that reporting trip, and even more so now, was the huge spike in meth use that Mexico has seen in recent decades.
For that assignment, I also went to the state of Guanajuato. People could buy “cebollitas,” little packages of meth that wrapped up looked like the end of a spring onion (or scallion to my American readers) for the same sort of price for which it was going in Tijuana. Partygoers on the gay scene in Celaya, Irapuato and other cities in the state used it to stay “up” all night, truck drivers were getting high on it to drive long hours, and factory workers were using meth to pull long shifts on assembly lines in the state’s “maquilas” (factory lines).
At the time of that reporting project, which happened in 2019, meth use in Mexico had doubled and was the primary cause of why people were seeking help at both official and unofficial rehab centers around the country (some of Mexico’s unofficial drug rehab “clinics” are fodder for nightmares - you can read more about them in the story I published in VICE News at the time.
A couple of years later, things were no better: “We need to look at methamphetamine as the current substance that’s creating the most problems for people who use drugs in Mexico. We’ve seen an increase in consumption around the country and are suffering the unintended consequences of both preferences for substances and drug policy changes,” Jaime Arredondo, a professor at the Drug Policy Program at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica — CIDE) in Aguascalientes, Mexico told InSight Crime researchers in 2021.
So it was interesting to hear attendees at a conference last week in Mexico City, organized by Insight Crime (one of my gracious employers) about precursor chemicals, discuss the problem of synthetic drugs in Mexico. The conversations that took place were mostly around the context of the illicit fentanyl that is produced here and then transported to the U.S—for those who don’t know about the opioid crisis killing tens of thousands of people in the U.S, mostly thanks to fentanyl produced by Mexico’s cartels, where have you been? But very little was said about meth use in Mexico, and how it too is why there is so much violence around the precursor drug business. Meth is a cash cow for Mexico’s drug cartels, who are the “primary producers and suppliers of low cost, high purity methamphetamine” sent to U.S. consumers, leading to “significant supply” of the synthetic drug in the US market, according to the DEA,” in this report by Insight Crime.
Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has denied, many times, that fentanyl is produced in Mexico. This is despite clear evidence to the contrary. But his position enables him to shirk, to a certain extent, the pressure he is receiving from his neighbors to the north to take the problem seriously. A truer fact about fentanyl is that it affects a fraction of the amount of people in Mexico than it does in the U.S, and so in that sense fentanyl consumption is certainly more of a U.S than Mexican problem. (One of the first moves President AMLO made when he took office was to cut all federal funding to Mexico’s harm reduction clinics, part of a corruption crackdown on the country’s NGO sector. Users of drugs here are generally criminalized and stigmatized.)
Not only that, but the community of people affected by fentanyl opioid overdoses in Mexico are largely those living in precarious conditions, if not on the street, in border cities like Mexicali and Tijuana. The type of people affected in the U.S are not only much more numerous, but a much broader spectrum, including white, middle-class college kids who - let’s face it - governments care a lot more about than impoverished and marginalized communities, many of whom are homeless.
But the same cannot be said of meth consumption, which is ravaging communities all over Mexico. The Sinaloa Cartel, Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), and their associates may have started producing it decades ago for the American market, but it is now a huge domestic consumption market and source of profit for Mexico’s criminal syndicates as well.
Meth doesn’t kill at the same rate that fentanyl does, but it is highly addictive, a huge public health challenge, and a burden on the state, both in terms of the rehab and health costs as well as the policing pesos dedicated to netting bag guys who traffic and sell it.
At a time when the bilateral relationship between Mexico and the U.S is at something of a (possibly all-time) low, American diplomats here might be wise to frame the precursor drug problem in Mexico as a shared problem to the new president, whoever she is. That rather than an American problem that Mexico is ethically obliged to help fix. With more emphasis on Mexico’s meth addiction, which is being fed by the same flow of precursors via its ports and borders, President AMLO’s replacement may be more inclined to lend herself to helping, rather than hindering, the fight against synthetic drugs. Because the quality of many Mexican lives depends on it.
Your right theres so many people addicted to meth