Why Acknowledging Mexico’s Meth Problem Could Help its US Relationship

When Ceci was 16, she was addicted to methamphetamine and her parents admitted her to a clandestine drug rehab clinic in Mexico City. She said the people from the anexo, one of Mexico’s many underground drug rehab clinics, came for her in the night.

“I was super drugged up and it was awful,” she said. “I didn’t want to go and [the people from the center] tied my hands and feet and I was screaming my head off. They carried me out because my parents signed a form [to have me admitted].”

That was back in 2019. Since then, Mexico’s addiction to meth (known locally as cristal) has only grown and become even more of a cash cow for the powerful drug trafficking organizations making it. Originally produced by cartels to satisfy US users, Mexico’s domestic meth addiction started to rise around 2009 and is now at its highest levels. The demand for meth use treatment in the country’s government-run addiction clinics grew from 9.1% in 2014 to 46.2% in 2022, according to the latest official data.?

“Since the pandemic, the meth epidemic has grown,” said Ruben Diazconti, who works in a Mexico City harm reduction clinic for drug users and HIV patients. “Colleagues tell me it has even expanded to rural areas like Oaxaca and Guerrero…and cristal use is now happening in areas where there was no problematic drug use before.” The number of anexos in Mexico, which can be deadly for some inpatients, has grown in recent decades in response to the lack of government drug treatment centers.?

But another drug — fentanyl — is more frequently in the spotlight when it comes to synthetic drugs, Mexico’s violent cartels, and the challenge that precursor chemical trafficking presents. Illicit fentanyl, which is produced in clandestine kitchens by criminal organizations rather than by legal pharmaceutical companies in manufacturing plants, is at the heart of the US opioid epidemic and kills tens of thousands of people per year. Trafficked by criminal organizations including Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), illegal fentanyl is the main driver of US drug-related deaths according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).?

Fentanyl consumption in Mexico, however, is relatively low and largely confined to border cities like Tijuana and Mexicali. Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has consistently denied that illegal fentanyl is produced in Mexico, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He says that consumption of the deadly synthetic opioid is an American problem.?

He cannot make the same argument for meth, whose consumption in Mexico is surging under his nose. It is also the most consumed stimulant in the US –- just not the most deadly. The US counted more than 34,000 meth-related poisoning deaths last year, compared to just more than 10,000 in 2017. Fentanyl killed that many people during the first six months of 2023 alone, according to DEA data.

But even if it is less deadly than fentanyl, meth remains a public health challenge in Mexico and provides a way for the country’s violent cartels to finance and empower themselves. Meth use there could be the key to helping US officials persuade Mexico’s soon-to-be new government to do more to tackle the synthetic drug trade ravaging drug users on both sides of the border.

The Making of Meth

The precursor chemicals used to make both fentanyl and meth in clandestine drug kitchens around Mexico are trafficked through the country’s ports and borders from China and other countries across Europe and Asia. Mexico’s government, as well as the private sector that produces and profits from the sale of these chemical ingredients, have important roles in regulating these flows.?

This and other related issues were the focus of a conference arranged by InSight Crime, a think tank focused on organized crime, earlier this month at the Ibero-American University in Mexico City, backed by a detailed report on the precursor trafficking business and the types of chemicals and actors involved in the trade. This trade presents an “unprecedented challenge for governments and multilateral organizations seeking to mitigate the development, manufacturing, production, and distribution of illicit synthetic drugs,” the report said.

“The US focus on fentanyl, which is not consumed in any great quantities in Mexico, has let the Mexican government off the hook,” said Steven Dudley, InSight Crime co-director and one of the report’s authors. “Both the US and Mexico should be dealing better with methamphetamine use — which is going global — and Mexico-based criminal groups are leading the way.”

The Strained US-Mexico Relationship

The bilateral security relationship between Mexico and the US has been strained since López Obrador took office in late 2018. Mexico’s former military chief Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda was detained unexpectedly in October 2020 while visiting the US, where he faced drug charges alleging he was working with a Mexican cartel while also supposedly spearheading the country’s organized crime crackdown.

AMLO’s government was apparently surprised by the incident, and allegedly threatened to throw the DEA out of Mexico if the former military chief wasn’t released. Cienfuegos was sent home, and the charges were dropped in an unprecedented series of events between Mexico and its northern neighbor. Since then, collaboration on binational anti-narcotics efforts has been tense, with practicalities such as approving visas for DEA staff in Mexico suffering severe delays. The military has remained central to Mexico’s crackdown since it began in 2006.

Relations have been further frustrated by AMLO’s denial of fentanyl production in Mexico. And although AMLO’s government has continued to make some significant cartel boss arrests in the last few years—the most notable was the detention and extradition of Ovidio Guzmán, the son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán—it’s widely seen as being capable of doing much more. For example, not a single money laundering investigation related to the synthetic drug trade exists in Mexico, according to freedom of information requests that InSight Crime filed to the Mexican government.

When Mexico’s new president takes power later this year, US officials would be wise to focus on meth — perhaps above fentanyl — as a means of persuading the new government that taking further action on the clandestine synthetic drug trade is in its own interest as well as that of US-based drug users.?

“It would have to start with an approach by the US saying ‘OK, let’s do a common, shared joint assessment of what the most important salient challenges are in terms of controlled chemical flows in Mexico today,’” said Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States from 2007 to 2013. “That allows you to suggest that because meth is a greater problem, the US can support Mexican efforts in control, interdiction, and harm reduction on meth. But that would obviously have to lead to other substances related to fentanyl.”

How the US approaches Mexico’s incoming government on the precursor trafficking issue also depends greatly on who wins the US presidential election in November. But the issue is a pressing one on both sides of the border.

“I think all governments can do a better job dealing with the demand side of the equation, including the Mexican government, which appears to want to ignore the dangers of synthetic drugs,” said Dudley from InSight Crime. “Methamphetamine use is skyrocketing across the country and poses a grave threat to health, education, and security in the country. Fentanyl use may not be far behind.”

Whether it’s Mexico or elsewhere in Latin America, Southern Pulse has the experience, network, and relationships to simplify this challenging region with honest, direct answers to your most complicated questions.

Want to learn more? Let’s chat.

CC BY-ND