Mexiko. Do Changes in Mexico’s Fentanyl Production Explain a Drop in US Overdoses? 

Mexiko. Do Changes in Mexico’s Fentanyl Production Explain a Drop in US Overdoses? 

Kevin González was at a point of total desperation when he decided to check himself into an addiction treatment center in the Mexican city of Nogales, in the state of Sonora, on the US border. 

After more than a decade of using fentanyl and other opioids in Phoenix, Arizona, González said his body could no longer find relief from the usual doses. The pain, insomnia, and anxiety of withdrawal were unbearable, and the pills on the streets lacked enough potency to take effect.

“I was consuming 50 fentanyl pills a day, sometimes smoking four at a time. They weren’t enough,” González told InSight Crime in November when he was three months into treatment.

The amount might seem alarming, considering that a single pill with more than 2 milligrams of fentanyl concentration could have been lethal. However, several users and staff members at treatment centers in Sonora and Arizona told InSight Crime that consuming amounts like that had become common. Gonzalez, moreover, said he had not been around an overdose for years or known of friends who had gone through one. (InSight Crime, USA, 16.01.2025)

https://insightcrime.org/news/changes-mexicos-fentanyl-production-explain-drop-us-overdoses/