EFE.– The seizure of fentanyl in Mexican territory has grown by 525% and that of methamphetamine by 128% in the three years of the Andrés Manuel López Obrador government, General Luis Cresencio Sandoval, Secretary of National Defense, said on Monday.
Organized crime has lost more than 6,362 million dollars with the seizures and operations of the Mexican authorities in these three years, said General Sandoval when presenting a report at the morning press conference at the National Palace.
Only of fentanyl, the synthetic drug that most worries the United States, the Government has insured almost 3,500 kilograms in these three years, more than six times the 559 kilograms of the last three years of the previous government.
This equates to a loss to organized crime of $ 1,398.8 million, Sandoval said.
“Fentanyl insurance has been increasing, strategies have also tended to detect these drugs, both in production in laboratories and in the movement that is made to make them reach consumer markets,” he added.
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While 124,735 kilograms of methamphetamine have been seized, more than double the last half of the previous administration, with losses to organized crime that represent more than 1,810.4 million dollars.
In the same period, seizures of cocaine have grown 77% to add 65,020 kilograms, the equivalent of 780.2 million dollars, and those of heroin have increased by 26%, to almost 1,400 kilos and 48.9 million dollars.
In contrast, Sandoval reported that marijuana and poppy seizures have been cut by more than half.
The authorities have secured 6,784 hectares of cannabis and more than 583,000 kilograms of this plant in these three years, a loss of 697.9 million dollars for drug traffickers.
While the seizure of hectares of poppies went from 73,440 to 36,211, a loss of more than 1,500 million dollars.
“Consumption has changed and production has changed worldwide. They have gone for the production and consumption of more lethal drugs, but also with greater ease to make them and at a cost that allows them greater profits, ”said General Sandoval.
The Secretary of Defense presented this report as pressure from the United States grows to combat drug trafficking in Mexico, a country with which it has signed a new Bicentennial Understanding to cooperate on security.
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The United States published a list on Wednesday offering $ 5 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Ovidio Guzmán López, Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar and Joaquín Guzmán López, sons of Joaquín “el Chapo” Guzmán .
The State Department also identified as a drug trafficking organization two Mexican groups from the Beltrán Leyva cartel: Los Rojos and Guerreros Unidos, whom it considers responsible for much of the heroin trafficking from Mexico to the United States.