Throwback Thursday: Jalisco 'Meth' Territory April 26, 2012.

 "Char" for Borderland Beat 

This article was translated and reposted from REPORTE INDIGO 

WRITTEN BY: ÁNGEL PLASCENCIA 

The drug that has caused serious public health problems in several Asian countries and the United States is cooked in large quantities in Jalisco. The production of methamphetamines, crystal meth, or meth has been growing year by year since the last decade, with narco-laboratories all over Jalisco.

The drug that has caused serious public health problems in several Asian countries and the United States is cooked in large quantities in Jalisco. 

The production of methamphetamines, crystal meth or meth has been growing year by year since the last decade, with narco-laboratories all over Jalisco. 

And this increase, which is not exclusive to this state but to the entire Pacific coast of Mexico, has also had an impact on the growth of consumption in these same regions. 

The coordinator of the West Central Zone of the Juvenile Integration Centers (CIJ) Enrique de Jesús Aceves Arce showed how methamphetamines are increasingly consumed in these states, with use rates higher than national rates.

And the second largest metropolis in the country cannot be exempt from this dynamic. 

According to Aceves Arce, in the case of addictive substances such as crystal meth or heroin, there is generally an addiction problem in the territory where it is available. 

Before this decade, the CIJs did not have a significant number of registered cases of treatment for crystal meth addicts. Now they hand out pamphlets on the repercussions of the abuse of this substance in Guadalajara. 

In an interview for Reporte Indigo, three methamphetamine addicts explain how easy it is to obtain crystal meth in the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area (ZMG) and even in the surrounding areas, in nearby municipalities such as Ameca, Jalisco. 

It is in the interior of the state where the most drug laboratories have been dismantled: from 2000 to 2012, around 73 percent have been dismantled. 

In July of last year alone, two clandestine laboratories were dismantled in Ameca.

The problem of methamphetamine production in Mexico has worsened since the restrictive policies imposed by the United States on its territory. 

In 2005, the US Congress stopped the excessive sale of pseudophedrine -the main ingredient of methamphetamines- without prescription. 

At the same time, the U.S. government started a war against narco-laboratories in its territory.  

Since then, methamphetamine production centers have skyrocketed in western Mexico. 

In Jalisco, according to figures from the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena), the number of these production points detected grew tenfold from 2007 to 2011, from 6 to 63. 

In 2011, Jalisco reached second place in terms of the number of production points at the national level, behind only Sinaloa with 77. 

And in 2012 the trend does not seem to be going down, since in less than two months eight drug laboratories have been detected. 

The 'chemical city 

Guadalajara is located about 300 kilometers from Manzanillo, Colima, a port that receives goods from Asia, which contains the most pseudoephedrine produced.

It has a growing pharmaceutical industry and the known influence of drug trafficking groups from Sinaloa, Durango, and Michoacan, states with large methamphetamine production.

In fact, since October 2008, the U.S. Treasury Department blacklisted Productos Farmacéuticos Collins, S.A de C.V; Laboratorios Willmar, S.A de C.V and Lomedic, for their alleged links to drug trafficking. 

The U.S. government accused these companies from Guadalajara and Zapopan of participating with the Amezcua Contreras organization, which operated in Colima and whose emergence came from a split of the Milenio Cartel or the Sinaloa Cartel. 

The ZMG, the "chemical city" as it is nicknamed by the US embassy, has been the scene of the most scandalous seizures in the history of drugs. 

Like the 15 tons of methamphetamines that happened in Tlajomulco de Zúñiga just a month ago, when a narco-laboratory was found in the ranch "El Villarreal".  

The seizure is so large that it represents about 34 percent of the annual production of methamphetamines "intercepted" by authorities in the world, according to estimates made with figures from the 2009 World Drug Report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).  

That is why Jalisco is one of the red hotspots in the country watched by the U.S. government, as verified in the Wikileaks cable 08GUADALAJARA612. 

And it is an area that, due to the diversity of criminal groups and the increase in home production, is attracting a greater number of consumers. 

Now in Sinaloa, Durango, Michoacán, Jalisco, Colima and Nayarit, criminal groups in these areas are more interested in crystal meth with a cost per kilo 300 times higher than marijuana and double that of cocaine. 

But with a minimal production cost, within the reach of anyone with a kitchen to prepare it.

Source: REPORTE INDIGO