DEA asks Mexico to “do more” to control fentanyl trafficking to the US

The US drug enforcement agency (DEA) urged Mexico on Wednesday to “do more” against the cartels that control the trafficking of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that can be purchased on social networks and has caused tens of thousands of deaths in the United States.

“We believe that Mexico has to do more to stop the damage that we are seeing” because the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG) “are dominating and controlling the entire global fentanyl supply chain, and operate throughout Mexico.” , the first of them in 19 of the 32 states and the second in 23, DEA director Anne Milgram said during a Senate hearing.

The issue stings in the United States, plunged into the worst drug crisis in its history, with 107,735 deaths from overdose or accidental poisoning between August 2021 and August 2022.

“An American dies every five minutes. It is unacceptable,” said Rahul Gupta, director of the White House Office of Drug Control Policy.

drug process

Milgram explained the process. It all starts in China, where the cartels buy the chemical precursors to make fentanyl and take it to Mexico to produce it as a powder. They then concoct it into counterfeit pills that resemble American prescription drugs like Oxycontin, Percocet, Adderall, or Xanax.

Once sold, he adds, the cartels look for a way for the proceeds to return to Mexico and often do so “through Chinese money laundering organizations.”

The DEA’s priority is to “defeat these two cartels,” but “we can no longer just target” the leaders, but rather focus on “the entire network,” from chemical precursor companies to carriers, details its director.

The DEA believes that Mexico should give top priority to the cartels responsible for trafficking fentanyl and methamphetamine, as it did from 2012 to 2015 to dismantle Los Zetas.