An organization that helps those with drug addiction on the Mexico-U.S. border warned that fentanyl consumption has reached migrants arriving in Ciudad Juárez, where some already arrive with drug problems from their countries, according to Mexican government statistics and a report published by the EFE Spanish news agency.
Julián Rojas Padilla, coordinator of Harm Reduction in the Compañeros Program (HRCP), a civil association that supports consumers who want to quit substances, told Spanish language media outlets that fentanyl mixed with other drugs in Juárez has become a popular new and dangerous choice of narcotics reaching the migrant population.
The anti-drug activist also said that among those arriving in Ciudad Juárez, they have detected some who ingest drugs and others who take them throughout their harsh migration journey to endure it.
“Without job opportunities, support networks, the vulnerable conditions in which they find themselves, all of this leaves them exposed to experimenting with other types of substances or to return to the substances that they already consumed from their place of origin or that they consumed there. for some time," Rojas said, according to the agency.
The alert comes as pressure grows from the United States to control fentanyl trafficking from Mexico, which claims that the drug and its chemical precursors arrive from Asia to the country, where Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador denies that there is a consumption problem.
A few weeks ago, the National Commission on Mental Health and Addictions (CONASAMA) reported the care of 430 patients for ingesting fentanyl in 2023, an increase of 29% compared to 333 the previous year.
“They are concentrated in states in the north of the country such as Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Sonora. This shows that the increase is at a local level, not national. However, the main concern revolves around its high lethality,” the entity warned in a report.
Rojas Padilla also explained that fentanyl is a synthetic opioid 150 times more powerful than heroin and 100 times more intense than morphine, which makes it deadly. He explained that it has an effect of sedation, lethargy and turning people like “zombies,” who remain immobile and lose track of time.
He also warned that this substance has no color or smell, so anyone who consumes any other drug adulterated with fentanyl can easily overdose. The expert warned that such a situation puts the migrant population even more at risk, because when they obtain a substance they do not have the possibility of knowing if it is adulterated with the powerful substance.
“People don't realize until they consume it and have an overdose event,” he said. “That is the way to detect the presence of fentanyl,” he said.
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