Winning the Battle Against Drugs
The war is another thing, entirely.
Yesterday’s episode of the NYT The Daily podcast, “How Tariffs Are Shaking Up the War on Fentanyl,” was quite surprising. Michael Barbaro hosts Mexico City Bureau Chief Natalie Kitroeff, who went through extraordinary lengths to interview people who worked in fentanyl labs in Sinaloa.
Her initial impression was how futile efforts to crack down would be:
I think the main takeaway that I had leaving the lab was this is a drug that is extraordinarily easy to produce in almost any conditions. And once you get the product, the amount that you need to make a lot of money if you’re the cartel or if you’re a user to potentially kill you is tiny. I mean, the US government says that people who have not been exposed to fentanyl could be killed by the amount that fits on the tip of a pencil.
[…]
And in this kitchen, in this makeshift lab, I had just seen that tip of the pencil thousands of times over.
Furthermore,
The Sinaloa cartel, the cartel that is, according to the US government, responsible for bringing much of the fentanyl on American streets across the border, they have years worth of experience in industrialized drug production. They’ve done this with a ton of different products, including meth, which is another synthetic drug. So they have experience in making drugs out of chemicals.
They also have a lot of experience corrupting the Mexican government. The last time there was a major crackdown on drug cartels, the security chief that led that crackdown ended up being convicted in an American court for taking bribes from the Sinaloa cartel. So this is an incredibly powerful, experienced organization that has the wherewithal and the resources to do this. And the Mexican government has not been effective at stamping that out.
After a long discussion about various threats that President Trump made shortly after office—including an implied threat to send in the military to deal with the problem—we get this:
I was deeply skeptical. I had been going to Sinaloa for months. Based on everything I’d seen, this organization, this criminal group, was just so entrenched in so many aspects of daily life.
And it’s really hard to imagine making a serious impact on a production operation that requires so little, that can just be restarted from one moment to the next, in a place that is dominated by one of the most powerful criminal organizations on the planet. But even though I was really skeptical, I wanted to go back into a lab to see whether all of these threats, whether all of the pressure that Trump had put on Mexico had led to real changes, whether any of this actually made a difference.
[…]
It was really remarkable. The dynamics, it seemed, had completely changed from the last time we were there. I mean, this was still a very dangerous place. There was a lot of violence. But when we started talking to RX cartel contacts, they told us there was basically no production of fentanyl happening in the city. It had totally plummeted.
[…]
Fallen off a cliff. I mean, they acknowledge that production was happening elsewhere in the country. It’s not like fentanyl stopped being made in Mexico, writ large. But here, things had slowed to a near halt.
We met the two cooks who had invited us into their labs. They said, no, we shut everything down. There is such an intense crackdown by the government right now, and we’re under so much scrutiny and pressure, that we’re not cooking anything.
We didn’t meet them inside a lab. They met us at our hotel room. And they said, we’re not doing anything right now.
We’re actually firing employees. We’re saving money. We’re trying to sell our cars and other property to try to make up for lost income, because nothing is going on here. There is no lab for you to visit this time around. And we saw firsthand the crackdown that they were so afraid of.
[…]
While we were there, the Mexican government arrested two major players within the cartel. So there was a lot of activity. At one point, we go to meet with a higher level cartel member who, when we get to him, he said he had heard about the raid that we ran up on. And he is genuinely shaking, his hands.
[…]
His hands are trembling in front of us. And he said, the only option for me right now is survival. No, we’re not cooking. No, we’re not making fentanyl.
That is shut down right now. It may be temporary. We are moving labs. We’re doing this elsewhere.
But right now, I am on lockdown here. I am not leaving my house. I have lookouts everywhere. And I can’t even be here.
He cut the meeting short. He basically ran out. He was so scared.
Well, these guys that we’re talking to are saying, look, the main thing that has changed from when you were here last is that Trump is in office and he’s making all of these threats, and the Mexican government is cracking down like never before. Obviously, the Mexican authorities were on the streets before this. It’s not like they weren’t doing anything. But the cartel members say they’re feeling the heat at a much higher level.
Bullying strikes me as a poor strategy for dealing with friendly governments. Still, the degree to which it is working in the short term is stunning. The fact that they were able to enact this crackdown with such devastating impact essentially on a dime would certainly seem like a pretty strong indication that this was a low-priority effort until Trump turned up the heat.
Given how long our own government, through administration after administration, has been fighting the so-called War on Drugs, I’m deeply skeptical that this level of crackdown is sustainable. There’s just too much money to be made and too much demand for the product.
Why are you posturing as though this is some kind of good faith effort?
The War on Drugs was always about racism
Nixon admitted War on Drugs was explicitly about criminalizing black people
The War on Drugs is a war on people
Don’t forget the fun of criminalizing the hippies!
It was never about “drugs” — it was always about criminalizing left-wing ideas for political gain.
If we forcibly searched and drug tested 100% of employees on Wall Street this coming Monday, is your money really betting they’re going to find zero speed, weed, crystal meth, and oxy?
Is this an actual crackdown though, or just a game of whack-a-mole? (Or should I say another game of it? It’s the French Connection bust all over again. That bust was supposed to “end” heroin traffic. And did, for a while.)
Jüst a reminder that fentanyl deaths dropped 24% last year, a large drop off. Is there is a 24% decrease in almost any product we would expect to see unemployment. While we dont know for sure if fewer deaths means less usage it is likely as that has been the pattern with other drugs. Also, with profits likely down it will be harder to bribe police.
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2025/2025-cdc-reports-decline-in-us-drug-overdose-deaths.html
Steve
@Gavin: I think there are legitimate public health concerns, on a bipartisan basis, over fentanyl in particular.
@Gavin: I’m sure you’re right that drugs can be found everywhere, and it’s only criminalized for some people. But drugs are still harmful and devastate individuals, families, and their communities when they result in addiction. Making possession of some drugs a crime is not ideal but it’s something that helps reduce other costs.
I had a different reaction to the podcast, and was planning on writing about it.
I have been at least tangentially studying the drug war for decades. I am not surprised that a foreign government in need of US goodwill would engage in a visible set of actions to try and placate the US.
As noted in OP, “I’m deeply skeptical that this level of crackdown is sustainable. ”
And this is the case. As the podcast also noted: the fentanyl lab in question was small and mundane. If large-scale coca farming and production could elude and relocate billions spent by the US government over decades, then I am certain a bunch of fentanyl cooks can find new kitchens to work in.
To me, this is theater.
But I agree, it does demonstrate that it is possible. And yes, there is corruption on this issue within the Mexican government, but I don’t think that the bullying will end up leading to a significant long-term diminution of fentanyl production.
The most likely thing to diminish fentanyl as drug enemy number one is some new drug to replace it in the conversation.
It was powder cocaine, then it was crack, then it was meth, then it was fentanyl (and I am skipping a number of other panics).
I am not saying it isn’t a serious problem, but I am profoundly skeptical that it can be solved the way we are told it can be solved, because we have been trying this approach longer than I have been a alive and it hasn’t stopped drug use, drug addiction, nor drug-related deaths.
Brute force is quite effective at destroying most things. We could start rounding up junkies in West Virginia and drawing and quartering them. That’d discourage consumption, not just through intimidation, but by killing the customers.
The question has never been, ‘does brutal repression work?’ Of course it works. The problem is that a society that practices brutality is a brutal society with vast knock-on damage out of all proportion to the initial problem.
@Steven L. Taylor: I guess my reaction was just that 1) I was not expecting the threats to have any significant positive effects and 2) since I was under the impression that the Mexican government was literally at war with the cartels, I was shocked that there was this much excess capacity for crackdown.
@Michael Reynolds: It’s not even clear that “brutality” is what’s going on here; they’re just sending in SWAT-type forces to arrest the cartel leadership and bust up the production facilities.
As you note, demand is an important part of the equation. Given that demand seems especially high in economically depressed areas, perhaps a government policy that led to stable higher earning employment instead of, say, putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work and destroying the fruits of their labor that they have found meaningful would be more goal oriented
@Erik:
I keep wondering what all those Fent junkies are going to do when they are forcibly dried out. It’s not like we care for people with drug problems.
The United States is a scam.
@Beth: I bet they’ll find a different drug, or alcohol, or both. Fortunately detoxing from opioids is rarely fatal, you just feel like it is. Alcohol is much more dangerous in that regard
How does this affect the epidemic of ketamine use among unofficial pseudo cabinet members, and other White House visitors.
@Gustopher: Ketamine is the equivalent of powder cocaine back in my day–mostly used by white upper mids. Additionally, there are many clinics out there to help Ketamine abusers manage their abuse. They don’t have to buy street drugs like the fent heads do. Think opioids in the 90’s and early in the new millenium.
@Michael Reynolds: The problem is: even attempts at substantial violence against producers, cartels, traffickers, etc. has not worked. See: Plan Colombia.
Given my 50+ year out-of-date chemical background, I could make a comfortable upper class income working out of my 6×9 bathroom, illegal drugs just ain’t going anywhere.
This was true back in 75, when my paper on cost/benefit of the legalization/taxation of illegal drugs was shot down by my advisor because it was simply immoral to propose.
In conclusion, I’d like to congratulate drugs for winning the war on drugs.
It’s not just corruption. There are plenty of ways for corrupt officials to make money other than the cartels. It’s that the cartels offer rewards to officials who help them, and threaten to kill those who don’t.
James, Steven, the authors here claim an impressive amount of inside information.
Given the NYT’s sanewashing of Trump, why should we believe them?