The difficult — and harmful — economics of Mexican fentanyl

By Robert Murray Last updated Feb 4, 2023

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For many years, Mexican cartels have made massive cash trafficking medication. The commerce was lengthy dominated by laborious medication similar to heroin and cocaine — however lately, the felony organizations have taken over the underground fentanyl market, eclipsing China as the principle U.S. provider.

A Los Angeles Occasions investigation printed Thursday uncovered a brand new entrance within the cartels’ efforts to show illicit fentanyl into money. In three cities in northwestern Mexico, reporters discovered that some pharmacies are promoting counterfeit capsules laced with extra highly effective substances similar to fentanyl and methamphetamine.

Consultants stated these capsules are nearly actually coming from cartels aiming to cross them off as reputable — and difficult-to-get — prescription drugs similar to oxycodone and Adderall. However some readers questioned: Why would cartels go to the difficulty of constructing pretend capsules, and lacing them with lethal medication?

In line with drug market specialists, all of it comes all the way down to demand — and {dollars}.

“One of many causes fentanyl has largely displaced heroin is as a result of it’s simpler to fabricate, you don’t want a poppy subject, you simply want a lab,” stated Chelsea Shover, a UCLA researcher and the senior writer of a current research that paralleled the findings of the Occasions investigation. “You should buy a capsule press on-line and make very convincing fakes.”

Testing on an Aderall pill came back positive in Cabo San Lucas.

That explains why pretend capsules would make extra enterprise sense than heroin, however it nonetheless leaves the query as to why promoting pretend capsules could be a extra engaging enterprise transfer than actual capsules.

Traditionally, reputable oxycodone has been laborious to come back by in Mexico, particularly exterior of hospitals.

“For a very long time it was tough to get medical doctors to prescribe ache drugs,” stated Jaime Arredondo, the Canada analysis chair on substance use on the College of Victoria. “In 2015, they modified the legislation to make it somewhat simpler in idea, however it looks as if medical doctors are nonetheless comparatively reluctant to prescribe.”

However even when prescribed oxycodone is tough to come back by, as Shover identified, “You don’t want a prescription to make a fentanyl pretend.”

Other than that, fentanyl is a comparatively low-cost and straightforward drug to synthesize, and a really small quantity can go a good distance.

“You may make a product of comparable energy utilizing rather a lot much less fentanyl than oxycodone,” Shover stated. “You may make extra capsules with much less product.”

And as Dr. David Goodman-Meza, a UCLA assistant professor who can be one of many research’s co-authors, stated, it’s largely U.S. patrons who’re driving the demand for these fake prescription drugs — not as a result of they need the fakes, however as a result of they’re in search of the actual factor.

“That is very true as we clamped down on entry to pharmaceutical opioids within the U.S. in an try and ‘clear up’ our drug use downside,” he stated. “Promoting fentanyl within the type of capsules is absolutely advertising and marketing to a bunch of the inhabitants that is probably not keen to strive ‘laborious medication.’”

Even somebody who isn’t serious about heroin or cocaine could be keen to take a seemingly protected pharmaceutical capsule.

On the pharmacies Occasions reporters visited final month, capsules had been typically priced between $15 and $35 every. These figures are out of attain for a lot of native drug customers. And, as Arredondo defined, the marketplace for oxycodone amongst Mexicans just isn’t sizable — partially as a result of physicians there have been so hesitant to prescribe highly effective painkillers.

“Plainly it’s simply filling a void for American vacationers,” he stated.

And catering to vacationers is a technique for cartels to broaden their market.

“If you will get individuals who have more cash hooked on fentanyl, even when they don’t comprehend it’s fentanyl, they’re going to come back again for extra,” stated Steffanie Strathdee, a distinguished professor of medication at UC San Diego and one other co-author of the UCLA-led research. “Vacationers have extra assets, and the cartels are conscious of that.”

However precisely how a lot cash counterfeit capsules generate for cartels is harder to say, based on Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, senior skilled with the World Initiative In opposition to Transnational Organized Crime.

A display board outside a Cabo San Lucas pharmacy

“One of many questions I’d like to have the ability to reply is how worthwhile is all that? How a lot does it actually value to supply it from A to Z? As a result of we hear so many various figures, the vary of uncertainty within the figures is insane,” he stated.

In contrast to the cocaine commerce, for which researchers have a robust sense of the financial mannequin from the rising fields of South America to the streets of New York Metropolis, there’s little or no dependable information on the economics of producing, trafficking and promoting fentanyl and fentanyl-laced tablets.

“We don’t know, like, how a lot does it value to supply one capsule?” Le Cour Grandmaison stated. “With fentanyl, we don’t have the financial mannequin in any respect.”