Employees unload medication at a “mega-pharmacy” storage facility on its inauguration day in Huehuetoca, Mexico, Dec. 29, 2023. A brand-new report launched by the Mexican federal government Friday, April 12, 2024, states the nation is dealing with an alarming lack of fentanyl for medical usage, even as Mexican cartels drain lots of the illegal narcotic. Credit: AP Photo/Fernando Llano, File
A report launched by the Mexican federal government Friday states the nation is dealing with an alarming lack of fentanyl for medical usage, even as Mexican cartels drain lots of the illegal narcotic.
The paradox was reported in a research study by Mexico’s National Commission on Mental Health and Addictions. The research study did not offer a factor for the scarcity of the artificial opioid, which is required for anesthesia in health centers, however declared it was an around the world issue.
The commission stated fentanyl needed to be imported, which imports fell by more than 50% in between 2022 and 2023.
Mexican cartels appear to be having no issue importing lots of precursor chemicals and making their own fentanyl, which they smuggle into the United States. The report states Mexican seizures of illegal fentanyl increased 1.24 loads in 2020 to 1.85 loads in 2023.
A few of that is now spilling back throughout the border, with a boost in illegal fentanyl dependency reported in some Mexican border areas– an issue Mexico paradoxically blamed on the United States.
“Despite the constraints of schedule in pharmaceutical fentanyl in our nation, the extreme usage of opiates in current years in the United States has actually had crucial consequences on intake and supply in Mexico,” the report states.
The report stated that ask for dependency treatment in Mexico increased from 72 cases in 2020, to 430 cases in 2023. That seems like a small number compared to the approximated 70,000 yearly overdose deaths in the United States in the last few years associated