Under US Pressure Over Fentanyl, Mexico Wages “Imaginary War on Drugs” Drazen Jorgic and Jackie Botts - Reuters
go to original December 21, 2023

Mexico’s army appears to be raiding only a handful of active drug labs every month, despite U.S. pressure to crack down on fentanyl trafficking, with facilities that were already out of use accounting for 95% of seizures this year, according to defense ministry figures obtained by Reuters.

Reuters revealed in March that Mexico had dramatically revised upward the number of lab raids by including hundreds of inactive labs on its seizures list since President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office in 2018. At the time, the news agency was unable to establish what percentage of the raided labs were operational when they were captured.

New data obtained by Reuters in August from the Mexican Defense Ministry (SEDENA) after a freedom of information request shows that out of the 527 labs raided by Mexico's army in the first seven months of this year, only 24 laboratories, or less than 5%, were "active" labs.

That dataset also revealed a similar pattern in the first four and a half years of Lopez Obrador’s administration, with inactive labs accounting for 89% of 1,658 raids carried out by the army from December 2018 to August this year. The data did not specify how long those labs had been out of use.

Smothering the flow of illicit fentanyl from Mexico has become a top priority for the Biden Administration, which has ratcheted up pressure on Lopez Obrador's government to intensify the hunt for clandestine labs on Mexican soil.

Adding discoveries of inactive labs - which may have been abandoned for years - to Mexico's tally of seizures had the effect of inflating Lopez Obrador's record amid pressure from Washington, says Guillermo Valdes, Mexico's civilian spy chief from 2007 to 2011.

"SEDENA is ripping up its prestige by altering the figures. Who is going to believe them after this?" said Valdes, who has been critical of Lopez Obrador's hands-off security strategy.

Mexico's presidency and SEDENA did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.

After meeting U.S President Joe Biden in November to discuss migration and drug trafficking, Lopez Obrador, who previously asserted fentanyl was not a Mexican problem, said his country "is committed to continue helping to prevent the entry of chemicals and fentanyl" into the United States.

Read the rest at Reuters

Related: Mexico Accused of ‘Imaginary War’ on Fentanyl With 95% of Raids on Inactive Labs (Straight Arrow News)

Related: Mexico “Sincerely Committed” to Cracking Down on Fentanyl, AMLO Says (Axios)

Related: What’s Behind the Spike in Fentanyl Overdoses in Mexico? (The Take)

Related: Some Mexican Pharmacies Are Selling Full Bottles of Adderall, but It’s Actually Meth (Los Angeles Times)

Related: New Concerns Arise Over Counterfeit ADHD Medications in Mexico (Express Healthcare Management)

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