The fentanyl outbreak in the United States could end the opium era in Mexico

It's deadly powerful: two milligrams of fentanyl is a lethal dose for an addict. Its consumers often mix it with heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine by camouflaging them in free-trade pellets. It is sold as a powder, poured into a liquid on blotting paper, in containers of eye drops, nasal sprays or tablets similar to those of other prescription opioids. In addition, its value is much lower than that of other drugs. In the United States its consumption is considered an epidemic.

The majority of its production comes from Chinese clandestine laboratories that they mail through the world without any control from the authorities of Pekin. Because of their low cost and the ease with which they can be trafficked, they constitute a boom in the Nordic country. But this reality has brought about a paradigm shift in the neighboring country: Mexico.

It is with the fentanyl epidemic that poppy production has been reduced in Mexican lands where until 2017, 30,000 hectares were allocated to its cultivation. In Guerrero, the state where the gum most needed for heroin was harvested, the kilo of opium went from $ 1,300 to $ 200 in just two years. For many farmers who plant illegally, this activity represents too much risk for a shrinking company.

The Mexican government must finally pay attention to this reality that has been abandoned for decades. Farmers will stop planting poppies because they have stopped being profitable but they are asking for help. to be able to face the narco threat and its reality of extreme poverty.

In dialogue with the journalist Nina Lakhani of the English newspaper The Guardian, Julia Sánchez, mother of 10 children, learned that she had to leave the business after the death of her husband and the near-zero profitability of "gum", the raw material extracted from the poppy flower used to produce heroin."I do not know what rubber is for, we say drugs but I do not know what that means. The only thing I know is that the only thing we know how to grow is not sold anymore. We are desperate"

For the worse, the government of Andrés López Obrador he wanted to destroy his illegal fields, but instead sprayed the air with poisonous bean and chickpea plantations, destroying the other forms of livelihood that existed in Warrior.

To make matters worse, the collapse of the poppy price could lead to a poster war, desperate to see how their business will collapse. What will be the final reaction of the drug lords when they see that they no longer produce? Small parcels in the middle of the mountains are likely to be purchased by mining companies who wish to remain in this Mexican state for years without any chance..

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid similar to morphine, but 50 to 100 times more potent. The numbers are scary. In 2017 – the most recent year for which official information is available – this opioid and similar opioids have killed nearly 49,000 people in the country. United States.

In the United Kingdom, in the meantime, anxiety is growing and the authorities could determine that the origin of the drug was the same: China. The health statistics of Canada revealed that in 2017, 72% of deaths related to opioid abuse involved fentanyl, an increase of 55% over 2016.

Official statistics for 2018 will not be encouraging despite the campaigns that governments North America and Europe They launched among its inhabitants. In the first quarter of last year alone, the number of deaths from opioid overdose – most of them fentanyl – was 29 thousand in the United Statesaccording to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The circulation system is not the traditional system. For this little product, you do not need loaded cocaine or marijuana that take off from improvised tracks Colombia, Mexico o Venezuela and that they arrive clandestinely on the North American territory or on a Caribbean island.

On the contrary, these deadly pills come from China by public or private mail –US Mail, FedEx o UPS– directly to their consumers. Without any kind of medical prescription. In small doses, the "microwave shipments"They are impossible to trace to the authorities." Payment is also difficult to follow: addicts use bitcoins as currency.

The "business" is one of the most profitable for drug traffickers. A report shared by the DEA -the drug control agency of the United States– estimate that A kilo of heroin is sold on the black market for around $ 80,000 – and down –, while the same amount of fentanyl can reach nearly $ 2 million.

The clandestine Chinese laboratories – among which stands the mighty Zheng clan– they send small doses to American consumers, but in bulk to large Mexican cartels. Once there, these organizations mix it with their heroin and start smuggling again.

At the moment, the steel regime has failed to control the production of hundreds of laboratories that synthesise this dangerous drug. Some people think that they do not want to touch one of the most prosperous industries. The same ones who get fresh dollars in times of trade war.