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Tuesday, December 6, 2022

Ioan Grillo: Mexican cartels have turned to fentanyl

By Ioan Grillo in Unherd, reposted to Borderland Beat by "El Huaso"



In the hills of Mexico City’s luxurious Lomas suburb, close to an embassy and UN offices, is a white pillared mansion that was the site of the world’s biggest ever drug cash bust. In 2007, Mexican federal agents stormed through its ornamental gates to discover a mountain of $205 million in bills, along with pesos, Euros and Hong Kong dollars. It did not, however, belong to one of Mexico’s scarred and bloodthirsty drug lords from the mountains; instead it was the property of the suited Chinese-born businessman Zhenli Ye Gon.

Ye Gon was making his fortune, say US and Mexican prosecutors, by importing the flu medicine pseudoephedrine from Chinese labs and selling it to Mexican gangsters who cooked it into crystal meth to traffic to the United States. A fan of high-stakes poker, Ye Gon was then jetting to Las Vegas, where he lost $125 million at tables (a casino was later ordered to hand over much of this to the US government) and bought a million-dollar home for a casino hostess. After a lengthy legal battle, Ye Gon was extradited back here to Mexico, where he sits in a high-security prison on drugs, organised crime, money laundering, and weapons charges.

At the time, when I covered the story, Ye Gon appeared to be a passing novelty. Importing chemicals from China contrasted with the cocaine and heroin trade I was investigating, in which you can go to the mountains and witness the peasant farmers harvest coca leaves and opium poppies. It’s apparent now, though, that Ye Gon was a pioneer, and that Mexican cartels have followed his lead to reshape their entire industry — with perilous consequences for Americans.

Since that record bust, Mexican traffickers have gradually shifted the core of their business from plant-based drugs to synthetic drugs — those created using man-made chemicals. These include meth and illegally-made fentanyl as well as others, such as ketamine. Synthetic drugs are cheaper to produce and more lethal, with fentanyl many times more powerful than heroin. To churn out these synthetics, cartels followed Ye Gon’s lead to forge an unholy alliance with shady elements of the Asian chemical industry.

The scales gradually tilted until 2018, when US agents on the border seized more crystal meth than cocaine (both considered “uppers” and party drugs), and 2021, when they also seized more fentanyl than heroin (both considered “downers”). The trend has accelerated in 2022, with US agents nabbing 14,000 pounds of fentanyl, which was seven times the amount of heroin, and 175,000 pounds of meth, two-and-a-half times the amount of cocaine.

Marijuana was once a big cash crop for Mexican traffickers, but border seizures have plummeted since 2012, when US states began legalising recreational weed. Further south, Colombia is still producing enormous amounts of cocaine, but much is now going to the booming European market. Meanwhile, the biggest shipments to, and profits from, the United States are in synthetics. This paradigm shift has transformed the logistics of Mexican drug trafficking.

Traditionally, drug trafficking relied on plantations of poppies and coca leaves, which are vulnerable to aerial crop spraying. Today, the mass production of synthetic drugs involves two behemoths of globalisation: supply chains of cargo ships, and the pharmaceutical industry. Pacific cities such as Manzanillo, Mexico’s biggest container port, have become bloody trafficking hubs. Pill mills can be anywhere, from quiet Mexican suburbs to right on the border itself.

The cartel shift to synthetics coincides closely with the soaring rise in US drug deaths. Back in 2007, about 27,000 Americans lost their lives in overdoses. By 2021, the number had quadrupled to 107,000 deaths. The majority, 71,000, involved fentanyl or other synthetic opioids. The second highest, 32,000, involved “psychostimulants” including meth. Traffickers are also mixing fentanyl into cocaine and heroin, causing more deaths with those. The rise in overdoses is especially sharp over the last five years, just as busts of fentanyl on the border have soared.

But beyond the stats is the human pain. Most of the victims are in the prime of their lives and some are teenagers. Millions of parents, siblings, children, and friends bear the loss.

There are various forces behind the US overdose epidemic. Pharmaceutical giants dished out too many legal opioids that fuelled addiction, as courts continue to hear. Shutting down industries in the Rust Belt drove workers to despair, and the pandemic and lockdown were terrible for mental health. But it is hard to deny that changes in the supply of illegal drugs — from cocaine and heroin to synthetic meth and fentanyl — are a major factor behind the ballooning death toll.

Like everything in American life, the overdose epidemic gets dragged into partisan politics. Republicans have sought to take a hard line, lobbying the White House to classify fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction and Mexican cartels as terrorist groups. In their midterm attack ads, Republican candidates tied fentanyl deaths to illegal immigration. Democrats, meanwhile, have pushed hardest for “harm reduction” programmes, especially in deep-blue cities like San Francisco. But the level of open drug abuse there has drawn fire from both Republicans and moderate Democrats.

After covering the human catastrophe of narco violence here in Mexico for two decades, I have mixed feelings about the latest political row. I have long been a critic of the War on Drugs, which has failed to stop the drug trade while creating a huge black market for ultraviolent cartels. When US states began legalising marijuana, I celebrated it, thinking that the cartels and drug violence could slowly become a thing of the past.

But the rise of synthetics and the sheer level of overdose deaths have rattled my thinking. It is evident that Mexican traffickers, who work with corrupt officials here, are indeed pumping ever more perilous drugs northward. When cartels mainly moved cocaine and cannabis there was an argument, at least, that they were providing Americans with products they demanded. But with the perilous fentanyl, which some people take unwittingly, there is validity to the claim they are flooding poison over the border. The question remains, however, as to what can be done about it.

In Manzanillo, I sit and watch the vast container ships come into the bay from across the globe and line up to unload their cargo. Last year, the port handled more than 3 million TEU’s (20-foot container units) — a vast amount of cargo for synthetics and their precursors to be hidden in. In a restaurant in the port, I meet up with the owner of a freight company who brings goods in from China. Working in the port for decades, he says smuggling has always been rife but has evolved over time. Today, Mexico’s two most powerful mafias, the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel, operate there and are always looking for shippers to move their products. “This is the gateway to China and all of Asia,” he says. “They have to be here to get access to chemicals.”

Opioids or precursors can be hidden under a false bill of lading and disguised as a legitimate chemical, he explains. Customs inspectors have to bust open a container and run a test, and while they are doing that, other loads can get through. It can also be hard to keep up with all the different substances. The International Narcotics Control Board lists hundreds of precursors for synthetic drugs, and they are likely scratching the surface. Scientific papers say there are more than 1,400 variants of fentanyl, and that “every year new fentanyl analog compounds, or fentanyls, appear”.

Smugglers also have another technique, the shipper explains, which they call “remoras” or suckerfish, in which they bring in the contraband alongside legitimate cargo. Before the ship gets into port, the contraband is thrown over the side and taken ashore in small boats. It would, therefore, be difficult to stop the chemicals even if Mexican officials were all honest — which they are not. The shipper explains that intermediaries take bribes and deal with customs so that containers can pass straight through. “I can’t see this changing,” he said. “Only a dictatorship or invasion would stop this.”

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, claims to fight corruption, and over the last two years he has put elite marine military units in charge of the ports to clamp down on trafficking. “It is translating to more security, less contraband, more decommissions of drugs, above all fentanyl and chemical drugs,” AMLO said in November visiting Manzanillo. “It used to be silver or lead,” he went on, referring to the silver of a bribe or the lead of a bullet. “Now this has changed.”

However, the quantity of drugs being seized on the US border signal that fentanyl and meth are still coming through Mexico in vast quantities. Furthermore, AMLO’s position on cartels and crime is muddled. On the one hand, he has boosted the power of the military, created a new National Guard, and kept soldiers on the streets. On the other hand, he has talked of the need to avoid fighting cartels, and to have “hugs not bullets”.

AMLO’s call for peace is understandable considering the carnage in Mexico. Since President Felipe Calderón launched a military crackdown on cartels in 2006, there have been firefights reminiscent of civil wars, more than 300,000 murders, mass graves, and thousands of disappearances. But in practice, “hugs not bullets” has meant allowing some gangsters to act with impunity. In 2019, after soldiers arrested Ovidio Guzmán, the son of kingpin “El Chapo”, on an indictment for trafficking drugs including crystal meth, hundreds of gunmen took to the streets of the city of Culiacán. In response, AMLO ordered Guzmán’s release. By bowing to cartel intimidation, AMLO has raised the spectre of a country that is militarised but where powerful gangsters still flout the law.

Washington has also put pressure on China to stop the chemicals at the source. In 2019, China classified all variants of fentanyl as controlled substances, fulfilling a promise to President Donald J. Trump. However, a US congressional advisory group concluded that Chinese chemists were getting round the ban. “Chinese traffickers are using various strategies to circumvent new regulations, including focusing on chemical precursors, relocating some manufacturing to India, rerouting precursor shipments through third countries, and leveraging marketing schemes to avoid detection,” says the report from 2021 by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

But given China denies its responsibility for the drug epidemic, what can be done about it? If Beijing really clamped down, it could probably reduce the supply in the short term. But there are other countries where precursors could be made. Moreover, as former DEA agent Leo Silva tells me, the cartels are looking to take their drug production to the next step. “These guys are now recruiting chemistry professors from universities so they can actually produce fentanyl in labs,” he says. “Their goal is to create the precursors in Mexico so they can also stop getting the precursors from China and dealing with them… So they can produce more, and keep more profits.”

Source: Unherd

Follow the author Ioan Grillo on Twitter @ioangrillo

59 comments:

  1. Elmo needs to run a PSA (Public Service Announcement), to all Cartels no Fentanyl other drugs fine, Elmo has a meeting with in two months with President Biden.
    His Speech writer and Foreign Affairs Elbrand need to help Mexico look good, internet influencers, time to sweep, mop, got to hide anything negative
    Chart is in the works to show 80% in Sinaloa drug lab busts. Power point presentation.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Lmao @ Joe Biden. Nobody takes Biden serious. The guy can't even complete a sentence much less shake hands with the designated guest.

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    2. 2:23 Dang, the political talking heads got you.

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    3. 2:23 Joe Biden is a much more effective president than AMLO.
      No stage fright on the global podium as a leader of a country, AMLO puro gibberish y being apologist for dictators. Must be his goal

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    4. 2:23 a sleepy José Biden beat a the Trumpanzee nation sleeping on his basement couch, and he can't speak like MAGGAT leader, but he keeps beating them and kicking ass while they "try to kick ass and take names"...
      Jose also respects the US Constipation, enough to concede victory and accept defeat, I don't see José crying about anybody stealing his presidency or shit.

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    5. I saw you in Phoenix two days ago homes, your quite handsome.

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    6. 6:46 you saw SIR in Phoenix? He is handsome? Must be the Anime convention he attended.

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  2. Glad the asian dude got caught. That’s what he gets for simping. He bought a million dollar house for a casino hostess?? Give that money to the poor man. Not some gold digger.

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    1. The Asian Hostess has made him very happy, on many nights. The hostess knows how to please him.
      Lucky her gets a home.

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    2. You idiot if they took the cash this dummy lost 125$Million --- you think a House won't get confiscated.

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  3. It's written in the Bible, and they repent not of their sorcories (drug trafficking ) and their murders , bible prophecy fulfilled right before our eyes. The (tares) synogue of Satan control the cartels and everything else, gov, education, military, everything and everyone in power. I saw a small clip describing how the magnetic field in the earth and also in people is collapsing, so therefore people are going " insane" and the evidence is clear considering people are willing to injest poison and not think about the consequences. The ultimate goal is to kill, steal and destroy mankind and reduce it by 6 to 7 billion , and my standpoint, the devil has many workers and the evidence is clear to what's happened to humanity. Animals have more compassion, what a disgrace to mankind, but in the end , we all be judged for what we do and theirs no secret that won't be revealed. If your going to be evil, be that that, you'll get your just reward.

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    1. Devil's and angels are cartoonings.Believe in human beings.

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    2. People in "da community" promote drug usage and drug trafficking ,then when the thugs die .They enrich themselves of the death of the people they claim to defend . Now that is evil

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    3. Ioan conveniently forgets to NAME NAMES, from the Fox administration to the FECALATO that were his accomplices, javier lozano, genaro garcia luna, and somebody who stole half the money in Zhenli' money room, foreign currency, weapons, jewelry...

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    4. And how about EPN, he took at least 100 million dollar bribe from Chapo Guzman.

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    5. The Bible only said drugs were sorcery because of the presence of belladonna and henbane and mandrake and other witchcraft plants in that area at the time (medieval Europe). It was more of just a bad coincidence. Opium’s gothic hypnagogic visions didn’t help either.

      If western Europeans in the middle ages weren’t so phobic of “toadstools” (mushrooms) they would’ve discovered liberty caps which are psychedelic and all of history would’ve been vastly different. This is why the west has a history of witchcraft/sorcery but no history of shamanism. It’s just based on the hallucinogens/drugs that were around at the time. Heck, they were more willing to fuck with wolfsbane than a mushroom.

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    6. Horniado Garcia Luna LMAO!

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  4. By so much more profits from drugs being illegal rather than legal,you invited the money addicts,the most violent people in history, in to the drug game.Now you are fighting them and there are many more money addicts than drug addicts.
    The drug war is a farce,evading the central question and confronting it head on,why do people like putting things in their noses,mouth or veins,get a headache and hallucinate.

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    1. So your saying cartels are Money Addicts.😳🤥😷

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    2. 2:23 more like gold digging bitches

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    3. They ain't nuth'n but gold diggers...ain't got nuth'n on this Platinum digger aka Canadian girl the Absolute Blonde Mob💋

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  5. Who? Doesn't matter.

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    1. Chemicals come from India & China ....nobody there will ever be arrested. Drug WAR ????? ITS A JOKE!!!!!

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    2. 2:34 Germany too

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    3. Deutschland auch?🤔

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  6. America critiques everyone and everything except there government

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    1. What do you mean by “America“? Because American citizens criticize the government plenty, especially in this context..

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  7. Here is some history, the British smuggled Opium from India (British colony at the time) . At one point half of the population was addicted and China's silver was drained at the advantage of the West. When China attempted to put a stop to this ,the British declared war and won the province of Hong Kong .
    Now the Chinese Communist government is using similar tactics with the USA (instead of Opium it is Fentanyl and Meth).

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    1. This one’s better “Europa the last battle” watch it

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    2. 2:34 yet, the USA’s involvement in the opium trade was limited compared to Britain. The US fought for China in WWII too so it’s hard to figure out Beijing’s gripe.

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    3. 2:34 the chinese government did not offshore US industries and jobs to their motherland, I doubt the chinese own much of their country's industry, buy the chinese government make a lot of money fron renting their captive communist labor.
      US Capitalistas invested on US companies and took them away from their owners using drug money from their drug trafficking investors, many of them LatinAmericans...
      One example: Bain Capital or Bain and co of Mitt's Fame.

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    4. @5:41 because Communist China wants to become the world super power . So they use these drugs to create American drug addict and destroy American economy . They use Tik Tok to distract Americans.They support leftist American hate groups,They interefere with American politics. They have waged a information economic and drug war against the USA .
      But we cant blame China , the West commited many attrocities against China

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  8. I don't see major military operations from CIA DEA FBI in Areas that make the Chemicals in China or India. But if it's Colombia or Bolivia , Peru ... USA will invade and conduct covert operations.

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    1. 2:54 if you are not a "chartered cartel", your loads get hijacked and sold to the best bidder, mexican cartels got the fentyls and meth, and a little cocaine that makes it in.

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  9. How does Germany fit into this its been reported cartels buy precursors from Germany. I never though a country like Germany would do that post Hitler

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    1. 2:57 Germs invented amphetamines and derivates, hitler WAS addicted, senator Jo's McCarthy was addicted to heroin and alcohol, (prolly to nixxon and roy cohn asses) duterte likes his drugs too...

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  10. This guy probably got his blessings and marching orders from the Chinese Communist Party - seriously.

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  11. Very simple... The U.S will outlaw those precursors chemicals...like they did with ephedrine.... remember.... Or they will just create a law ...adding that anyone caught with such amount of pills will be prosecuted with attempted murder.

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    1. Ephedrine was great if not abused. I would take one at night to help me stay awake driving.

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  12. Big pharma in America promotes drug usage. Hypocrisy

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    1. Who cares.. Properly dosed pharmaceuticals that people actually want like oxycodone or hydromorphone are not the issue. The DEA or FDA or whoever cracked down on these pharmaceutical opioids are the ones who have far more blood on their hands. Far more.

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  13. They have to tackle the factory that has all that rubbish. And therein lies the problem. The factory is in China. To make it even more insane 80% of the medicines come from China

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  14. https://revu.nl/artikel/478553/tse-chi-lop-de-aziatische-el-chapo translate it from Dutch to English

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  15. Leon Grillo a true legend. Great article. Just wanted to add, the money found in Mexico city ACTUALLY belonged to Vicente Fox's step sons.. true story,there the REAL BOSSES of Mexico

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    1. Yes ... Vicente Fox sons had business dealings connected to that rich Chinese national with _$250 Million in cash

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  16. If you doing any chemical drug and coke hopefully quit before you end up dead or a homeless POS. Homeless are there because the lifestyle and have burned time and time again every friend and relative.... Chinas government knows exactly what the are doing because nothing happens without the CCP.

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  17. The U.S allows these things to occur...to create new drug addicts...pluss drugs keep...lawyers... Corrections officers... Probation officers...judges and the system going... Without drugs wede have a lot of unemployed people.

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    1. Little do they know that it ends up costing us more in the long run. Can’t lock people up who are dead either

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    2. You are dead wrong because all long as there are criminals and today everyone is one one way or another worse than ever and selling fentanyl instead of good old fashion heroin will bring heat.

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  18. Pluss it allows them to create new stricter laws

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  19. If there weren’t so many nuthuggers in here glorifying CDS this and thatand ohhhh Chapitos are dead honorable zombies who only sell fake pills because the people who take them should knownbetter and money is money, where is my tiger?

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  20. Great read. Mid 2000’s pesdo was highly controlled in USA. Mexican cartels of course filled the void with super cheap, potent meth made on industrial scale. Big pharma pumping opiates into USA and making untold billions in profits. Once generational money has been made the prescription opiate industry is shut down. Mexican cartels again filled the void with even more potent synthetic opioids. Many USA blame Mexico for this. The carnage in Mexico many blame usa and its guns. The border couple be secured, would it be 100% NO! Would it greatly slow commerce, YES! But, it’s evident that if the border was treated like the Korean DMZ the many deadly contrabands flowing in both directions would be greatly diminished! That’s obvious. It’ll never happen until a catastrophic event occurs where the corrupt politicians in USA from both sides don’t have a choice. Vast corruption exists on both sides of border. It’s just different. Whether you are a liberal or a conservative you have to question Bidens 81 million votes. Only a blind intentional fool wouldn’t. Proof will never be found common.sense is all one needs. On the Mexican side no matter where you stand you have to ask is every recent Mexican president taking huge bribes from organized crime. These are questions that the average citizen, from both countries, question but are too busy raising a family, working, etc… the fix is in on both sides and the average citizen from either country are expendable whether it’s a fentanyl OD in the family, or an innocent bystander being caught up in rampant destruction in Mexico. Elon musk is exposing the obvious corruption and interference regarding the Twitter files. More of this needs to be done all over.

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  21. Chinese criminals are smart as fuck. And infiltrating their exclusive circles is complicated for a number of reasons, including unique/regional dialects and the way some their trust systems work. I’m sure there’s conflicting parties in China who want to do this right and others who don’t. There’s too much money on the line and at the end of the day no one has a solution to the fent problem. That problem is human greed and it’s in our nature.

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  22. The fentanyl is gonna be the downfall of the cartels. Pot is getting more legal more places. The restrictions are easing off drs to start back writing pain meds. No one wants to play Russian roulette every time they want to catch a buzz. People are going to begin to leave street drugs alone cause they can’t be sure what’s in it. So instead of getting everyone addicted like those greedy cartels want they’re making people sober up and leave the shit alone.

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    1. They’re still not making pain meds that accessible, just slightly less draconian than they were. But I agree, fentanyl is going to completely fuck over the cartels’ business model and end up biting them in the ass way more than they know. They’re clearly not thinking in the long term. People will still do their meth and coke but the enthusiasm for opioids will drop and people have already started significantly losing interest in messing with street opioids since it’s all fentanyl now. Cartels are so dumb they actually think people like this shit… Maybe they’re delusional from all that meth.

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    2. It’s all about fat and easy production for a profit. They could care less that it kills a few people.

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    3. 5:03 a few people???
      In 2021 in USA 107,000
      died to drug overdoses, drugs coming from Mexico. You call that a few.

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  23. Seriously Mexican cartels are so fucking retarded. Instead of uniting, making money, you got a bunch paisas fighting killing each other and for what? Instead of making good drugs they’re making cheap, dangerous crap.

    ReplyDelete

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