The head of Mexico's detective service has acknowledged the country is “the champion” of fentanyl production, which appears to run counter to past statements by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The president has long denied that fentanyl is produced in Mexico, saying that Mexican cartels only press it into pills or add finishing touches. But the head of Mexico's Criminal Investigation Agency says “Mexico has been the champion of methamphetamine production, and now fentanyl” since the 1990s. Experts agree that cartels in Mexico use precursor chemicals from China and India to make the synthetic opioid and smuggle it into the United States, where it causes about 70,000 overdose deaths annually.
