Cartels Used Tijuana Addicts As Guinea Pigs

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

Drug cartels used addicts in Tijuana to experiment with fentanyl mixed with other substances to see how many doses they could handle, said Victor Clark, director of the Binational Human Rights Center (Centro Binacional de Derechos Humanos).

According to anthropologist Victor Clark, fentanyl arrived in Tijuana five years ago, through consumers deported from the United States.

The addicts of the Tijuana River canalization were the guinea pigs of the drug trafficking cartels that five years ago began to mix fentanyl with other substances in order to quantify the doses that a human being could withstand and decrease the deaths by overdose of this opioid, informed the director of the Binational Center for Human Rights, Victor Clark, who specified that the wave of this drug arrived from the United States to our country.

"There is a whole marketing strategy for the introduction of fentanyl in Tijuana approximately five years ago I detected in the canal zone addicts who were beginning to demand fentanyl when it was not something common, these were deported migrants who were already consuming fentanyl on the North American side and here they were beginning to demand it."

Thus, the drug that today has confronted the governments of Mexico and Washington, began to be marketed on our border in order to increase profits and reduce the risk of loss, since a bottle of a few milliliters avoids the need to transport large volumes of drugs such as marijuana, or dig tunnels to send cocaine to the neighboring country.

"It is when this demand arose, but fentanyl had already gained strength in the United States, that organized crime groups very skillfully and using strategies to introduce a new product in the market, began to mix fentanyl with other drugs, mixing it with heroin, with cocaine, with methamphetamine and with the purpose of creating resistance in the consumption of fentanyl, it was a process of, quote unquote, education of street addicts so that they would say that the effects were different, that the drugs were more potent," he said.

He added that when visiting the Municipal Offender's Ranch, "the custodians declared that they were receiving people who did not come drugged with heroin or crystal meth, they did not know what it is, since addicts were appearing who were already consuming fentanyl, a process to form addicts".

According to the anthropologist, the substance arrived in Tijuana 5 years ago through consumers deported from the United States, and he pointed out that the consumption of fentanyl has increased in the border and unfortunately the authorities do not know how many people die from the lethal substance.

"Once past that process, they begin to openly market it as fentanyl on the streets of the city, which are the four M's that sell for one hundred pesos, or 25 pesos per pill. And while in the United States there are 200 deaths a day, the Red Cross says it attends 80 people for fentanyl a month, without the authority informing us how many of them die from overdose."

This drug has made the drug market more lucrative, where profits are greater to the extent that it reduces the number of seizures, the risk of loss of merchandise and transportation costs, he explained. "Fentanyl is inhaled, injected, it is a great opportunity for organized crime to obtain large resources."

Clark Alfaro pointed out that there is indeed fentanyl production in our country, and ruled out that this opioid that is not exported to the United States is consumed in the local market, since there is a drug manufactured expressly for export and a product aimed at the local market.

"There is a production for the North American side and the regional market, criminal groups produce fentanyl for the local market where consumption in the local market has been expanding rapidly, but I do not share the view that the fentanyl that is not crossing is staying in Tijuana for consumption," he added.

The first documented deaths as a result of fentanyl consumption took place in March 2018 when a cab driver covering the Tijuana-Rosarito route died from an overdose of the drug that in those years was just beginning to be introduced to our border.

According to nursing staff at the Rosarito General Hospital, the widow gave a bottle of the drug to friends of the deceased who attended the wake, and on the night of March 31 of that year, three drivers were found in an extremely serious condition and lying on public roads next to their units, according to the information report presented by municipal police officers.

Subsequently the drivers lost their lives, there were no medicines to help stabilize them, and according to the doctors who attended them, they were excessively expensive.

Video translation is as follows:

Interrogator: What’s your name?

Male: Jose Casimiro Monte Delgado. 

Interrogator: Jose Casimiro Monte Delgado. Ok, then. How old are you?

Male: 38. 

Interrogator: 38 then. What year are we in?

Male: 2013. 

Interrogator: That’s a negative sir. We’re in the year 2023. 

Male: Oh! Ok,ok,ok. 

Paco Zea  Paco Zea Com