Mexico’s Hidden Fentanyl Epidemic Disclosed by New Data Kate Linthicum, Keri Blakinger and Connor Sheets - Los Angeles Times
go to original July 15, 2023

A man who overdosed after shooting up in downtown Mexicali receives help from police and Red Cross paramedics. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)

As fentanyl has ravaged the United States, killing tens of thousands of Americans each year, Mexican leaders have insisted their country has been virtually untouched by the opioid.

Mexico officially recorded just 19 deaths from all opioids in 2020, the most recent year for which data are available, with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador contending fentanyl is exclusively a U.S. problem — one he blames on American “social decay.”

“There is a lot of disintegration of families, there is a lot of individualism, there is a lack of love, of brotherhood, of hugs,” he said during a March news briefing. “Here ... we do not have consumption of fentanyl.”

But new data tell a different story.

A novel testing initiative in Mexicali, the capital of Baja California, found that 23% of more than 1,100 bodies sent to the morgue over the last year tested positive for fentanyl, a synthetic opioid as much as 50 times stronger than heroin.

The research was led by the director of Baja California’s Forensic Medical Services, who shared the unpublished results with The Times. It is believed to be the first study of its kind in a nation where medical examiners have traditionally not done toxicology testing, in effect making it impossible to measure the scope of the nation’s drug problem — or even confirm its existence.

And it stands in stark contrast to the country’s official statistics, which show that 184 people received treatment for addiction to the drug nationwide in 2021.

In Mexico, postmortem drug testing is a rarity. That means when people die, medical examiners typically don’t find out what substances were in their bloodstream, or whether they were enough to kill.

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