12/21/2023

Under U.S. Pressure over Fentanyl, Mexico Wages “Imaginary War on Drugs"

Mexico's army appears to be raiding only a handful of active drug labs monthly

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 percent 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 percent, were "active" labs.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Reuters.