Last year 430 people received treatment for fentanyl addictionan increase of 29 percent compared to 2022, according to data from the National Commission for Mental Health and Addictions (Conasama).
In the Report on the Demand and Supply of Fentanyl in Mexico: generalities and current situation, Conasama warns that “the consumption and excessive use of opioids during the last decades in the United States has important repercussions on the dynamics of supply and consumption in Mexico” .
Since 2018 there has been an increasing trend in cases of fentanyl addiction. That year only 10 cases were reported, growing consistently since then.
“Starting in 2018, the number of cases received in treatment, whose impact psychoactive substance was fentanyl (mainly illicit type) have grown consistently, counting in the dozens until 2020 and in the hundreds since 2021.”
The The greatest demand for treatments due to fentanyl consumption occurs in Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Sonorastates that are located in the northeast of the country and of which three border with the United States.
The Conasama document states that in 2017 it was identified that people who use opioids began to consume a drug called China White, “a possible combination of heroin with fentanyl.”
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that article 234 of the General Health Law classifies as a drug for legal medical use., regulated and monitored by the Federal Commission for the Protection against Health Risks (Cofepris). This opioid is used as an anesthetic and analgesic to treat chronic pain in conditions such as cancer.
However, in recent years there have been cases related to the use of illicitly manufactured fentanyl which, due to the nature of its clandestine production, entails significant health risks for those who consume it. Conasama specifies.
The consumption of illegal fentanyl is due to the fact that it is an opioid with psychoactive substances 100 times more powerful than morphine and 50 times more intense than heroin. Being a highly addictive substance, low cost and easy to illicitly produce, since 2011 there have been deaths from overdoses related to this drug.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that every day at least 150 people die from fentanyl overdoses. The United States is one of the countries with the highest opioid consumption; For 2021, 80,411 deaths from opioid overdoses were recorded.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has repeatedly denied that fentanyl is illegally produced and consumed in Mexico. In contrast, the president has pointed out that fentanyl consumption occurs in the United States.
“There is no drug consumption in Oaxaca, there is no drug consumption in Chiapas. There is even consumption, but it is not a problem, that is, there is no drug consumption in Yucatán, there is no drug consumption in Campeche, but even in Sinaloa, in Jalisco, there is no such drug consumption; It is traffic, but there is no consumption of chemicals,” said the president in his press conference on December 6.