Mexico seizes half a million fentanyl pills, claims biggest synthetic drug lab bust to date
(The AEGIS Alliance) – The Mexican army announced on Wednesday that they had discovered the biggest synthetic drug laboratory to date and seized over 500,000 fentanyl pills during a raid.
According to the army’s statement, the outdoor laboratory was found in Culiacan, which is the capital of the northern state of Sinaloa – an area known to be the base of operations for the Sinaloa drug cartel.
On Tuesday, soldiers conducted a raid on the laboratory and discovered nearly 630,000 pills that were suspected to contain the synthetic opioid fentanyl. In addition, they seized approximately 282 pounds of powdered fentanyl and around 220 pounds of methamphetamines.
The army stated that “This is the highest-capacity synthetic drug production lab on record during this administration.”
Mexican drug cartels are known to manufacture synthetic fentanyl opioids by obtaining precursor chemicals that are shipped from China, which they then use to produce pills that are counterfeited to resemble Xanax, Percocet, or Oxycodone. Unfortunately, many individuals are unaware that these pills contain fentanyl, leading to the risk of fatal overdoses.
Interestingly, the drug bust occurred on the same day that the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee conducted a hearing to discuss the staggering number of fentanyl-related overdoses in the U.S, which currently stands at approximately 70,000 per year.
Senator Bob Menendez, who chairs the committee and is a Democrat from New Jersey, urged Mexico to take further action in response to the fentanyl crisis.
Menendez had concerns and expressed that “This means asking Mexico to do more to disrupt the criminal organizations from producing and trafficking fentanyl, although a politicized judiciary and incidents of Mexican security forces colluding with drug cartels will make that difficult.”
Kyle James Lee – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
