- Linda Presley
- BBC News, Mexico and California
A paramedic tries to save a San Diego woman’s life after she suffered a drug overdose
Fentanyl is a synthetic, lethal drug that is 50 times stronger than heroin. Fentanyl is killing Americans at such an alarming rate that the US has approved the sale of another drug, naloxone, which treats drug overdose poisoning without a prescription. But the effects of the destruction it causes begin in another country in the south.
The town of Mansanillo is on the front lines of the fentanyl trade.
This pretty seaside town on Mexico’s Pacific coast was made famous in the 1970s after Hollywood star Bo Derek appeared jogging on its beaches in the movie “10”. Today, however, she lives under the violence of drug gangs.
The town is home to Mexico’s largest port, which is also the third busiest in Latin America – 3.5 million shipping containers arrived there from around the world last year.
All kinds of products pass through the port, including chemicals that come mainly from China and India and are used to make organized crime’s most profitable product, synthetic drugs such as fentanyl. As a result, the port has become a major source of conflict and bloodshed in the state of Colima.
In 2022, the tiny western state has the highest per capita murder rate in Mexico as the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation gangs battle for dominance in the drug trade.
“Recently, we were able to seize propionyl chloride, which is used in the formulation of fentanyl. It is one of the many precursor chemicals,” says the naval commander in charge of security at the port, who will not be identified for his safety. [التي يصنع منها الفينتانيل] Which we see come to Mansanyu.”
Naval Commander in Mansanyo
It is noteworthy that the Mexican government placed all ports under the responsibility of the Navy in 2021, in an attempt to reduce the rampant corruption that facilitates organized crime.
Now, there is a rigorous system of inspections to monitor all workers in the port of Mansanyo, and companies that trade in chemicals. But there is another snag, which is that some of the ingredients are also used legally in the manufacture of agricultural chemicals and medicines.
That means rigorous document checks are in place, and teams of Navy personnel test shipments of chemicals to ensure they comply with classification labels.
There is also a police dog that was donated by the US embassy to the port authorities. This dog is trained to sniff out fentanyl, whether it is in the form of tablets or powder, as well as some of the primary chemicals that are included in the composition of the drug.
Mexico’s President Andres Manuel López Obrador recently made headlines when he said Mexico neither produces nor consumes fentanyl. But temporary “laboratories” have been discovered and dismantled in Mexico City and the northern states of Nuevo León and Sinaloa.
In the state of Baja California, law enforcement raided two buildings last year in Tijuana and found huge quantities of fentanyl tablets and powder, as well as hydraulic presses used to make the tablets.
Police dogs play a role in the fight against the drug trade
Tijuana is a chaotic and violent city located on the border with the United States. The city has become the “launching point” for fentanyl, which is trafficked north in the US state of California, as well as consumed locally.
“It’s killing everyone – it’s killing all my friends,” says Smiley, a fentanyl addict who lives on the streets.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people live in the open around the Tijuana Canal, a concrete canal that cuts through the center of the city. Many of them take drugs. As often happens in the United States, people who overdose do not realize that what they have taken is fentanyl.
Given its strength, even a very small dose of fentanyl could kill its users. On both sides of the Mexican-American border, it is sold alongside other drugs such as cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.
Smiley says he’s seen about 20 overdoses, but he saved all of their lives with naloxone, a nasal spray that can stop drug overdose poisoning. Naloxone is now widely available in the United States, but in Mexico, you can only get it with a doctor’s prescription. Smiley gets the drug from a local charity.
The problem does not only affect homeless people. In 2022, the Red Cross was receiving calls every month to help about 60 people who had overdosed on drugs in Tijuana, and these were people from different professions and backgrounds.
There have also been many cases of people overdosing at events or gatherings, but the number of deaths due to fentanyl is not known because there are no statistics on this matter in Mexico.
Tijuana at night
Drug cartels battle each other for control of the streets of Tijuana, and sometimes each street or apartment complex is under the control of a different group of organized crime groups. The competition for control of drug sales is fierce and bloody. In the month of January alone, there were 156 murders in Tijuana – a population of just about two million.
Fentanyl contributes to insecurity, and the profits from its sales are huge. It is estimated that this synthetic drug can be manufactured at a cost of only one percent of the cost of producing heroin.
Drug cartels no longer have to control rural communities and the lands in Mexico to grow poppies. All you need is to get the chemicals and hire someone who knows how to make fentanyl. Because it is so strong, it is a drug that pays well even in small quantities, especially when it is smuggled into the United States, where prices increase tenfold.
April Spring Kelly, who spoke to us from a US federal prison, recalled: “I would wear spandex – that corset that makes you look thinner under your clothes, and I would tuck [أقراص الفينتانيل] Inside”.
Other times, she smuggled drugs in her car.
Now April Spring Kelly is serving a lengthy prison sentence after pleading guilty to smuggling nearly half a million fentanyl tablets and other drugs from Tijuana into the United States in 2018.
Like many Americans, April became addicted to painkillers, then heroin produced by Mexican cartels, when prescription drugs became hard to come by.
To fund her addiction, she rented an apartment in Tijuana and began working for organized crime, moving fentanyl tablets across the border to San Diego.
Last year, 70,000 Americans died from an overdose of a synthetic drug such as fentanyl. April Spring Kelly is deeply remorseful – one of the fentanyl pills she smuggled caused the death of a baby.
“It’s awful,” she says. “I wish I hadn’t been involved in this.”
Border region in Tijuana
More than half of all fentanyl seized in the United States is seized at the California border. April was arrested at the San Isidro border crossing, through which some 120,000 people pass daily.
Once you cross the border from San Isidro in Tijuana, it takes 40 minutes by tram to reach downtown San Diego.
In 2021, there were 814 fentanyl-related deaths in the city’s county — more than 15 deaths per week among a population of just about three million.
“Over the past two years, there have been so many people who died that we couldn’t do autopsies on all the bodies,” said Dr. Stephen Kampman, the county’s chief medical examiner. “In order to be able to do autopsies on all the drug overdose people, we would have had to hire four other pathologists.”
It is unbearable, especially for those grieving the loss of a loved one.
In Coronado, a magical peninsula across from San Diego Bay, Jean Baker remembers a May 2021 morning she will never forget when she went to wake her 15-year-old son, Clark Salveron.
“I went into his room at about 7:30 am and found him there. I remember putting him on the floor while I was trying to resuscitate him, even though I knew he was dead. His computer was on, and he died sitting in his chair in front of his desk.”
Clark Salveron
Clark died of acute fentanyl poisoning. He thought the pill he was taking was Percocet, a prescription drug that contained the anesthetic oxycodone. Adam Gordon, the assistant attorney general who handled the case, says the deal was arranged over the Internet.
When Clarke was found dead, his laptop was open to his Instagram account, and the drug dealer had sent him messages through the app. Officers posing as Clark arrange another transaction and arrest the dealer. Those drugs came from Mexico.
The enormous harms of fentanyl are incalculable – not only for relatives of victims like Jan Becker, but also for the professionals dealing with the problem.
“I’ve worked on 486 deaths in four years,” says Ed Byrne, special agent for the US Department of Homeland Security Investigations Unit. “It’s a lot of locations to go to – a lot of bodies.”
Ed Byrne
From 2018 until last year, Ed Byrne collected evidence from sites where people died of drug overdoses, in an effort to identify the dealers who supplied them with fentanyl.
“You go to a homeless tent, and then to $10 million homes in La Hoya,” he says. [الراقي المطل على الشاطئ]”.
Some of the sites of those deaths remained engraved in his memory. “It’s like time has stopped there. They’re like paintings in your head.”
Pictures of lost lives – lots and lots of them. While Mexican drug cartels continue to produce and export fentanyl, there is no end in sight to the tragedy unfolding across the United States.
Photography: Tim Manzel