The Flow of Precursor Chemicals for Synthetic Drug Production in Mexico
Steven Dudley – Victoria Dittmar – Sara García, Jaime López-Aranda, Annie Pforzheimer, and Ben Westhoff
Precursor chemicals pose an unprecedented challenge for governments and multilateral organizations seeking to mitigate the development, manufacturing, production, and distribution of illicit synthetic drugs. As opposed to most legacy drugs -- which rely on plants, harvests, favorable weather, significant and varied manual labor, and transport of bulk amounts of illicit substances across heavily-policed terrain -- synthetic drugs can be produced in laboratories all year-round using a wide variety of mostly sparsely or unevenly regulated chemicals, which can be employed at different stages of the process in rudimentary laboratories and transported in large or small amounts, often without the knowledge of the transporters themselves. The sources for these chemicals span the globe. They are currently concentrated in China, where a relatively small number of companies appear to be producing precursor chemicals, in mainly two provinces. These chemicals are marketed and sold on the internet, where an army of online providers offer well-regulated and unregulated chemicals via the Clearnet and the dark web. These marketers are sometimes extensions of these same production companies and sometimes independent. Some are also clans, which appear to own numerous production and marketing companies. The precursors are transported to Mexico via cargo ships or air cargo, traveling direct or via circuitous routes. Cargo is often mislabeled, camouflaging the contents, purpose, or amount of their shipment. In Mexico, brokers and independent buyers facilitate this trade, filing paperwork, creating fictitious companies, or bribing officials.
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The chemicals then make their way to small producers. Often referred to as “cooks,” these producers synthesize the precursors into illicit synthetic drugs that are then sold to large buyers and transport specialists. Two large criminal networks buy and move synthetic drugs in bulk: the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG). These networks are responsible for bringing this product across the most difficult part of its journey and thus charge a premium for their services. After they sell the drugs wholesale, they are largely absent, leaving the distribution and retail sales to other local criminal networks. The precursor industry -- and the synthetic drug industry writ large -- is so challenging to disrupt precisely because it works across legal and illegal spheres, involves many layers and different criminal networks, and has many means to obtain its final objective: the sale of synthetic drugs to an increasing number of consumers. …
Washington, DC: InSight Crime, 2023. 147p.