Translated by El Profe for Borderland Beat from La Silla Rota
The heroin crisis in the United States stems from the absence of a government campaign to eradicate Mexican poppy, according to the DEA's National 2018 National Drug Threat Assessment.
"The use of heroin and its availability is increasing in the United States. The mixture of heroin and fentanyl is also on an upward trend. Mexico remains the main source of heroin. What is more serious, the increase in poppy cultivation and heroin production allows the Mexican cartels to distribute the drug with high purity and at low cost, while the demand in the United States increases, " the report adds.
Deaths from heroin overdoses are high and have increased throughout the United States, particularly in the Northeast and the Midwest. Deaths from heroin overdoses have quadrupled between 2010 and 2015; the most recent data indicates that deaths from heroin use amounted to 12,989 in 2015.
In addition, according to the study, the cultivation of opium poppy in Mexico grew significantly in recent years. It is estimated that in 2016 cultivation reached 32,000 hectares, with an estimated production of 81 metric tons of heroin. The amount is more than triple the heroin that potentially occurred in 2013 (26 tons).
"The increase was driven, in part, by the reduction in the eradication of poppy in Mexico."
"The levels of poppy cultivation and the production of its derivative (heroin) in Mexico, continues to increase, the main market is the United States. The heroin supplied is highly pure, cheap and increasingly contains more fentanyl. Some indicators suggest that fentanyl is significantly impacting the market share of heroin, in some markets, it is even supplanting heroin."
The document states that Mexican traffickers continue to expand their operations in the Eastern heroin markets. The largest and most lucrative areas are: Baltimore, Boston and its surrounding cities, Chicago, Detroit, New York and the surrounding area, Philadelphia and Washington DC.
According to the report, deaths related to heroin continue in the short term, at high levels, as high purity heroin remains available in US markets.
"The increase in the cultivation of poppy in Mexico will remain of high purity."
In addition, it is established that the heroin market is linked to the fentanyl market. Highly potent, this combination will probably lead to an increase in deaths from drugs derived from poppy.
Fentanyl continues penetrating the heroin market in the United States, and even threatens to take over the heroin market because the profit margin is higher for fentanyl. Whether fentanyl replaces heroin will depend on the extent to which traffickers incorporate it into heroin and its distribution activities.
According to the Government of the United States, the cultivation of poppy and the production of heroin reached a record number in 2017. Poppy cultivation grew 38%, from 32 thousand hectares in 2016 to 44 thousand 100 in 2017. And in terms of heroin production, the increase was 37%; from 81 tons in 2016 to 111 tons in 2017.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid approved for legitimate use as an analgesic. However, the drug has extremely strong opioid properties, making it a substance that competes with heroin.
I wonder how the Mexican EPA is dealing with all of the chemicals released in to streams from the massive laboratories?
ReplyDeleteTruly doubt that a department exists in Mexico.
DeleteNothing is being done, sorry to inform you, government looks the other way.
DeleteIt's all nonsense. All of it. The USA has become a nanny state where nobody is held accountable. I'm not going to debate, addiction being a sickness or not...I'm sure that it is, but the lax laws on drugs fuels all of this. Singapore doesn't have these issues because the consequences of using illicit drugs is beyond severe, but heck it works. Stupid Cat and Mouse Game. The farmers and people in the hills where they grow poppy have NOTHING. Unless the government is going to create shovel ready jobs for them, it would be stupid to erradicate the poppy. I'm curious what happens if they begin to utilize the poppy for legit medical industry purposes and if the money will flow to the people....I doubt it...It's so corrupt..sometimes as much as I love Mexico, I think it's beyond repair. Legalization isn't the solution either....
ReplyDeleteLegalization is THE solution because it iss the only way to take the profit out of drugs and without profit drugs will not be marketed (=pushed) by the dealers.
DeleteAnd without profit there wont be dealers either.
Well said 💯
DeleteLegalization is the solution. You must remove the money from the equation and when you do DTO’s will move to more lucrative activities. You don’t know if legalization is the solution or not because as a society in the country we’ve never tried it. But let’s look at cannabis it’s slow we become illegal all over North America … And what’s happening to cannabis trafficking in Mexico it’s coming to an end because it’s no longer profitable
DeletePot and heroine are two different animals...
DeleteMexico is just an opportunity provider. Has nothing to do with all those poppies in a certain asian country named for it's rugs. Nor on the profit from physicians handing out opiods like candy.
ReplyDeleteYour behind on the opioids. You can’t get so much as an aspirin these days in the hospitals. Meanwhile law-abiding patients are suffering from real pain and can’t get adequate treatment. Trump and his bullshit propaganda has schewed the narrative on pain medicine.
DeleteYou can get opioids such as OxyContin in the US still. However it is incredibly, unbelievably difficult to do so. 35 years ago a car completed a u-turn on top of a hill and took me and my bike out. I flew 150 feet through the air and hit a telephone pole...And even with all this damage to my back, head, and entire body...I had to jump through 1 million hoops To continue my medication last fall.
DeletePhysicians handing out opioids like candy that’s not happening I can promise you that. I first began having to use opioids in 2008, thoigh doctors had been offering offering them multiple times dating all the way back to my time in intensive care when I stopped taking pain medication against doctors orders, But I wanted a clear head… Which is why I waited 24 years after my cord and head injury to begin taking pain medication, because I know how addictive it is and when compared with other substances such as cannabis it is much more devastating. When you consume opioids you’re always a little bit fuzzy the next morning with a hangover depending on your dosage and if you’ve been consuming for a long time withdrawls come before your next dose is due.
With more powerful cannabis available in the form of concentrates I’ve been able to slowly wean myself off of opioids, though there are days when my body is in such severe pain that I can’t function or get out of bed without it—Primarily due to the fact that when I was injured it was believed no surgery and no intervention was best sci approach so thousands of bone fragments that used to make up my spinal column have fused together in an incredibly unbelievably painful way and I have many many fragments pressing against my cord But no doctor will do surgery on me because of the potential for further injury.
And Last fall I went for three months without a prescription Because of the crack down on doctors in all states writing opioid Scripts...And guess who stepping up to feel the void… I have heard of OxyContin, Oxycodone, And hydrocodone counterfeits from Mexico on the street here in Texas and available on the dark web. Personally I would stay away from all of those they probably got fentanyl in them.
But he commenter that noted That many many people around the country are in pain because of the media campaign against opioids and opioid abuse and frankly I’m really not for them anyway but I truly understand what it is to need them and use them in a responsible manner. There’s a fine line between use and abuse and it’s a very difficult line to walk… those of us who have no option unless we are willing to except excruciating incapacitating searing pain constantly… Know that you take the minimum amount possible to allow you to get through the day and that’s it. Taking more than that in the more you take Makes things worse i.e., your pain, bowel issues, catheter and urinary issues all become worse
How does the DEA blame drug consumption in America as the fault of another country? If the USA, wanted to stop drug use then it would fund its schools properly to educate students (and future parents) to be able to cope in the real world (including how to fix the inequity in America), so the drug users in America will fade away.
ReplyDeleteWell they give Mexico a lot of money to fight the drug production in Mexico. So I guess they do not need the money in Mexico to fight the war on drugs if that is the case. It all goes into higher ups pockets in Mexico anyway.
DeleteInteresting comment.
DeleteBlame on oneself doesn't sit well with Americans. Better yet, its government.
How much money and lives will it take to say it's a failure?
This proposal you speak of will cost them money. A loss of funding to keep the wheels of fortunes turnibg for many businesses sectors.
A different approach is definitely not on the agenda. Nevertheless, nice comment.
America blames everybody but themselves for all their own problems. That is the basic principle on which a military state (which the US has become) thrives.
DeleteThey give a shit, Merida were billions but stretched over years, I read something about aiding 500mio usd to the already 15billion budget of „mexican DEA“
DeleteI’m hoping high quality THC puts a dent in that.
DeleteThe heroin crisis is not Mexico's problem it is the American consumer and pharmaceuticals companies who are the root of the problem.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet despite the ongoing epidemic, pharmaceuticals have inflated prices for many prescriptions.
DeleteGetting richer everyday with no oversight. Then again who can stop them if they are pouring millions of lobbying money to our representatives.
No different from those kickbacks Mexican government officials received from cartels. Just legally!
Have we won the war on drugs yet?
ReplyDeleteAren't these baby boomers tired of their puritanical crusades ? Can't they let it go?
Cant win a war you dont wanna win
DeleteUnfortunately I can’t. It seems that they’re going to have to learn the hard way like previous generations
DeleteYes DEA blames the problem on the “absence of plan by Mexico government to eradicate poppy”. The problem is in USA because there is billóns of dollars USA citizens want to spend on heroin. USA always blame somebody - terrorists, immigrants, Mexican government - point everywhere other than where the problem starts and ends; American drug users.
ReplyDelete💯
DeleteSo what is true? Previous post says no one is buying opium gum, but this one says record production.
ReplyDelete4:38. Good observation and the previous article way exajerated the current market prices from Michoacan, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Veracruz etc. I spent 12 years growing upin Cosala and I still visit to see family and to fish Lake Comedero which has amazing bass fishing almost all year long. Everyone outside town and in the rural areas of the mountains farm for subsistence by amazingly farming small patches of a steep mountain side and surviving on the corn and edibles they grow or buy and they are growing mota and harvesting gum of poppy as a considerable part of their income - most everything else is bartering labor or whatever they might do. The mountains and government won’t allow these people high in the mountains the economies of scale to sell legal crops b/c there are US owned industrial farms around Querretero to Irapuato and around Torreón; and then Sinaloa’s enormous and productive agriculture between Culiacan and Mazatlan inland from the Pacific Ocean up towards the mountain basins of Sinaloa. There has been a decreasing price of what the sophisticated organizations will pay for gum b/c they now supplement by bringing cheap semi processed product from Southeast Asia where amapola or poppy is farmed on an industrial scale, while in la Sierra Madre it’s rare to see more than a 20 hectare plot because it’s very noticeable from the sky and the production is challenged by the mountain terrain while also making a business decision to keeping amapola farming too small to motivate the government to go to the trouble to eradicate their difficult to reach plots. Unlike mota in Mexico the amapola farming, labor, transportation, middle men, etc just makes the production very inefficient in Mexico’s mountains. On a cost basis it’s impossible to compete against the government protected industrial farming in Afghanistan and the efficient markets, but there will always be less sophisticated families that rely on gum grown in Mexico and their black tar will always have a market in Albuquerque, Phoenix, and other warm climates where addicts provide a year around market for the less refined and cheaper street chiva.
DeleteIt's easy dude! Too much supply will reduce the price. The of law supply and demand!
DeleteHaven't seen you comment in awhile Mr.Blanco.saludos
DeleteDamn,judging by that pic she was anything but a "be a lmao
ReplyDeleteAmigo @12:33,
ReplyDeleteProbably more prudent for you to ponder on a plan to get your aunt Leslie off the needle than concern yourself with environmental practices south of the border. White folks out here in the IE are slanging their kid's diapers on Craigslist for money to shoot some Mexican amapola no joke.
I'd recommend you focus instead on sayyyyyy..... the Keystone XL gambit on Trump's desk?
Why are we allowing racist posts now? You think its only white folks on heroin in IE? I hate to break it to you but every race is addicted in IE. Stop bieng a bigot and stop posting racist crap.
DeleteThis is such bullshit. It's the drunk blaming the bartender for their alcoholism. Man the fuck up and accept the U.S. has an addiction problem.
ReplyDelete7:37 Exactly! The hypocracy would almost be funny the problem were not such a giant ignored elephant in the room.
Delete💯
DeleteI think Big Pharma is the issue who got people hooked on the Oxycontin
ReplyDeleteBS!!!! it was big pharma in yje USA knowingly selling billions worth of pain killers they KNEW ended up on the streets that created the problem. One little company alone sold over 7 billion worth of pain killers to pain clinics in Florida. In other words they made more money than the CDS yet nobody went to prison. Instead they donate to politicians and live in luxury.
ReplyDeleteThis is what happens when the US makes marijuana legal and people switch products to cross in. Heroin production goes up.
ReplyDelete@11:38 Truth—well stated
DeleteUnknown unfortunately you are correct
Seizures last year by CBP
- Number of pounds of cocaine seized: 135,943
- Number of pounds of heroin seized: 2,015
- Number of pounds of marijuana seized: 4,330,475
- Number of pounds of methamphetamine seized: 6,135
The number of pounds of marijuana seized on southern border has declined significantly since 2012… while seizures on the northern border of cannabis have climbed by 140%… So actually heroin and methamphetamine production in Mexico and the subsequent Increase is also due to their inability to produce cannabis that will compete with the US and Canada grown Cannabis
Exports of cannabis from Mexico will eventually come to an end unless they learn to compete with US and Canadian growers and that’s not likely due to transportation $$...Unless that is they start converting their cannabis to a concentrate and attempting to traffic that, which would Reduce the size of the contraband by 75% and I predict this is exactly how the cartels will adjust tu us cannibas competition.
I suspect that we will see seizures of loads of cannabis concentrate at some point in the future
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/03/legal-marijuana-is-finally-doing-what-the-drug-war-couldnt/?utm_term=.f2741916623a
Another reason why we need God's help. Start praying, it works, worth a try.
ReplyDeleteGod is dead.
Delete2,000 years plus of praying and has not helped anyone -- ever.
Delete