Synthetic Drugs Displace Marijuana

[Judi Lynn]

By Ivan 4/08/2022 09:45:00 AM

With some changes, peasants in the Sierra de Sinaloa continue to produce poppy and marijuana, although not in the quantities that were produced in previous years, but in a more measured way due to the presence of the army, and because in rural areas of Badiraguato, Cósala, San Ignacio and Choix, since there is no economic development, what remains for the peasant is to plant poppies to survive.

. . .

Ioan Grillo, security analyst and author of research related to security and drug trafficking, considered that the market has moved more towards the production of synthetic drugs, because it is more profitable for the big bosses to produce methamphetamine or fentanyl, than drugs. that are based on plants such as poppies and marijuana.

“I have been investigating this issue for months, and it is clear that the cartels are moving more synthetic than traditional drugs, and it can be seen in the amount of methamphetamine and fentanyl that they seize at the borders, compared to traditional drugs such as marijuana and cocaine, or even traditional heroin is no longer the same, and everything seems to indicate that the market is going in that direction,” said Grillo, author of books such as El narco y caudillos del crime.

From June 2020 to June 2021, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reported 104,000 overdose deaths in the United States, almost three times more than the murders reported in Mexico in that same period, which confirms that the problem affects both countries.

More:
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2022/04/synthetic-drugs-displace-marijuana.html

[cilla4progress]

1. And who

is driving the demand?

[rubbersole]

2. Don Jr. and friends.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Article from 2018:How synthetic opioids can radically change global illegal drug markets and foreign

How synthetic opioids can radically change global illegal drug markets and foreign policy
Vanda Felbab-Brown, Jonathan P. Caulkins, and Keith Humphreys Monday, April 30, 2018

Replacing drugs derived from plants (e.g., heroin, cannabis) with synthetic analogues (e.g., fentanyl, spice/K2) could be the most disruptive innovation in the history of the international drug trade. As we explain in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, it may also alter international relations and drug trafficking organizations’ power dynamics in both positive and negative ways.

Producing plant-based drugs requires control of substantial territory. Poppy production provides livelihoods to hundreds of thousands of Afghan farmers and underpins some 30 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP, for instance. Similarly, hundreds of thousands of people in the Andes cultivate coca across large geographic areas of limited state reach.

If demand shifts to synthetics, that will undermine some drug trafficking and militant groups, whose power is rooted in controlling cultivation areas—unless they can switch to producing synthetic drugs. Other criminal groups will be empowered because they will be freed from concern about working in war zones, negotiating with developing-country poor, and needing to bribe border control agents. Instead, they can synthesize their product on their own and operate close to its final market.

. . .

Or consider Mexico. Poppy farmers in Mexico’s Sinaloa, Guerrero, and Michoacán states could lose market share to synthetic producers, particularly China and India. This could extend to coca farmers in the Andes if cheaper opioids undercut cocaine consumption or if synthetic analogues of cocaine are developed. Already, fentanyl’s spread is upending balances of power among drug trafficking groups and could reshuffle control of illegal drug retail markets in the United States and Mexico, such as between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Nuevo Generación.

More:
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/04/30/how-synthetic-opioids-can-radically-change-global-illegal-drug-markets-and-foreign-policy/

[Hugh_Lebowski]

4. It's not really 'the market' ... fentanyl is a friggin' shitty opioid for abusers

In every sense of the word ... the only thing it's really good for is (relatively briefly) keeping you out of withdrawals.

The high is shit, and it's short, and it has a high degree of respiratory depression, esp relative to the quality of the high.

And of course the 'street-grade' variety is friggin dangerous AF.

The "market" ... would much prefer the -codones and -morphones ... or for some, of course, heroin ... those are actual dope.

But they're locked down pretty tight/way harder to get they were early in the century. So people settle for the analog of 'dry brown dirt weed that came in from Mexico stuffed into a spare tire' ... cause there's not a lot of options.

Harshly locking down on legal prescriptions of Rx-grade, real opioids ... turns out ... is killing more people because the substitute is much more dangerous.

Not to mention often making life hell for legitimate pain patients who don't buy illegal drugs.