Veterinary dewormer, rat poison and suspected fentanyl: what adulterated drugs hide in Mexico City

Carlos has been trying to reduce his cocaine use since October, out of fear and caution.

He usually takes it on weekends in Mexico City with his friends, but they began to notice that the effects were different: more intense, shorter, more addictive.

Panic broke out there.

“Maybe it brings fenta,” Carlos wrote in a chat with colleagues at the end of last year.

A few weeks after a study was published that warned that half of the drugs tested at a festival near the capital were altered with fentanyl, they decided to stop taking it so regularly.

“I can assure you that for about eight months now a parakeet has been circulating that has been affected,” he says.

He is part of the group of consumers who have attended a free community substance analysis by the DiVU association.

Nervous, somewhat worried and with plastic bags with white powders or pills, everyone is here for the same thing: rumors that the drugs on the capital's market are laced with fentanyl.

Carlos's name is not really Carlos.

None of those attending this meeting want to be identified because of the stigma that still surrounds recreational drug use.

However, in this environment they can talk openly about their habits, their

dealers

, even the characteristics of the trips they experience with two scientists specialized in chemistry who analyze the substances under a microscope and in test tubes to see if they have any type of adulterant.

In just two hours, several doses of acid mixed with amphetamine, MDMA to which unknown substances have been added to increase its volume and, above all, several samples of coca adulterated with levamisole, a dangerous dewormer for veterinary use, have already emerged.

But there is no trace of the dreaded fentanyl.

This powerful and cheap opiate, 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more effective than morphine, made the leap from painkiller in operating rooms to the streets and is causing a public health crisis in the northern neighbor, where it has left already more than 70,000 overdose deaths.

However, — and despite the fact that American Republicans blame Mexico for being a laboratory and distributor of this drug — Mexican Health authorities assure that fentanyl has not reached the national market.

“Fortunately in Mexico it is not yet a major public health problem and we do not want it to be, that is why we are acting on it,” said the Undersecretary of Prevention and Health Promotion, Hugo López-Gatell Ramírez, last September.

It is true that there is no registry with official consumption data, but in border cities it is already a problem.

Fentanyl is dangerously close, there is a risk.

If we assume that it is not there and we do not have the antidote, people are going to die

An investigation tested 51 drug samples from 40 users in 2022 at an electronic music festival near Mexico City.

Although none of the volunteers who had their drugs tested expected them to test positive for fentanyl, it appeared in 14 of 22 tested samples of MDMA and in two of four doses of cocaine.

Silvia Cruz, co-author of the study and one of the first researchers to do field work on fentanyl in Mexico, insists that it is better to alert the population.

“There could be false positives.

We did everything possible to reduce them, and even so we found two positive cocaines without confirmatory analysis.

Where it occurs most is in methamphetamine,” she says in a telephone interview.

The expert warns that in northern Mexico 80% of the heroin samples tested contained fentanyl, so the possibility that this substance is circulating in the center of the country is “very high.”

“Fentanyl is dangerously close, there is a risk.

If we assume that it is not there and we do not have the antidote, people are going to die,” she says.

Scientific communicator, Astron Martínez, holds a test strip with a false positive for fentanyl.

Ana Chirino

For his part, Ruben Diazconti, anthropologist and head of the harm reduction program at the Condesa Clinic, calls for calm.

“We believe the festival results from the study are false positives, possibly test strips were used.”

This test, which can be purchased online, can give questionable results if the drug has a precise combination of components or is very high in purity.

“People who use heroin in the city are the most exposed and have not given warning,” he says.

He adds that if the results that more than half of the samples had fentanyl were true, there would have been an alarming wave of overdoses, especially if users did not know they were taking fentanyl.

He is concerned about other adulterants that are being found in narcotics, such as levamisole, which causes necrosis in the nasal passages.

The Ministry of Health of Mexico City and the Institute of Addictions and Prevention were contacted repeatedly by this newspaper to confirm or deny the presence of the opiate on the streets and other adulterants, but on all occasions there has been no response.

The lack of an antidote

While academics are still looking for a common point in their perception of the fentanyl crisis in Mexican territory, hysteria is already present among consumers.

In early February, the suspicious death of a well-known DJ in the city unleashed a wave on social media with warning messages.

In them, written mostly in English because they were intended for foreigners visiting the capital during art week, they warned to buy substances only from known sources, try to avoid cocaine and carry naloxone.

This medication serves as an antidote for opioid overdoses and is available for free sale in the United States, but it is very difficult to find in Mexico because it is classified as a medication with psychotropic effects.

One of the attendees of the DiVU community testing acknowledges that when he saw those messages on Instagram and Twitter, he preferred to be cautious and bring his MDMA to analyze it.

“The drug traffickers say in their banners that they are not going to sell fentanyl in Mexico, but they also say that they are not going to kill and we already know what happens,” he says, worried.

At the end of last year, banners with these promises signed by different criminal cartels were displayed in different cities on the border.

At this meeting, the advice is also shared to ask acquaintances who are traveling to the northern neighbor to bring them naloxone when they return and to have it on hand when they consume it.

Astron Martínez, social activist and scientific communicator who works at DiVU, points out the lack of studies to determine the presence of fentanyl in Mexico.

The civil association where he works carries out voluntary testing, but they have not reached 100 samples yet.

He estimates that fentanyl has been found in one in 25 of them.

“We have an underestimation of data.

Due to the political narrative, there is no real data accounting, we do not have autopsies, nor drug records,” he reiterates.

The RIA Institute, another of the reference organizations in public policies on drugs, is also doing periodic analysis of substances, also with a low sampling for now, and they have not found fentanyl.

“We need more data and analysis services with greater scope and protection for the user.

Otherwise, we run the risk of focusing too much on the alleged fentanyl warning and paying less attention to other proven and high-risk substances, such as methamphetamine,” adds Zara Snapp, director of the organization.

The experts consulted for this report agree on a lack of will on the part of authorities to document cases of drug consumption and overdose.

However, Martínez recognizes that thanks to social networks there is more demand for testing.

He and his team notice it in the shortage of analytical tests, which are also driving up the price of reagents used in the laboratory.

Caution at festivals

The beginning of the year in central Mexico has been marked not only by fentanyl hysteria.

Also for music festivals, where tents with small laboratories have been set up for five years to carry out free drug tests.

In these spaces, the organizers have noticed that attendees have lost the modesty to approach and take out their substances.

Monse Castera, cultural promoter at the Ceremonia festival, explains that on other occasions they did not search for fentanyl at the event.

“In the results that they gave us in other years there was rat poison in the bins,” she indicates and insists that the events do not promote consumption, but they have a table there to promote safety.

This year they are going to include opioids in the analysis search.

“If you don't want anything to happen to you, it's better not to consume, but the use of recreational drugs should be a right for entertainment.

Since the prohibition and negativity it becomes a taboo topic and that is the problem, so we are not going to stop doing it,” she says.

Castera says that at a private party during the art week that she organized, they carried out analyzes and of 22 samples studied, one tested positive for fentanyl and another was a false positive.

“The key to preventing accidents is communication.

Talk about drugs without taboo and without fear,” she adds.

The person in charge of an electronic music festival who prefers not to give her name or the name of the event indicates that of the almost 10,000 people who attended the last edition, 370 brought substances to be analyzed and none tested positive for fentanyl.

“There were substances not detected, because they did not fall within the parameters of those that we know exist.

We also see many drugs mixed with more things, some with opposite effects,” she warns.

These are the prevention policies that specialists like Silvia Cruz encourage seeing how the fentanyl crisis wreaks havoc in the north.

“We are not looking for consumer persecution, we are looking for emergency services.

We better prepare, right?

In the north of the country the epidemic is here to stay, the probability of it expanding is very high.

People move around and we have a lot of gringo tourism.

I hope we are wrong,” she says.

A scientist analyzes a sample within the initiative organized by Radio Nopal and the DiVU Collective, in Mexico City.

Ana Chirino

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