Fentanyl is a substance responsible for thousands of overdose deaths in the United States each year.
Bertrand Monnet, specialist in the economics of crime, produced a documentary series for the newspaper The world, entitled “Narco Business” (article reserved for subscribers). The Edhec professor notably visited the Mexican laboratories of fentanyl, a synthetic drug 50 times more powerful than heroin, which has caused numerous overdose deaths in the United States, and which could soon arrive in France.
franceinfo: Did you make an agreement with these traffickers to be able to meet them and film them? How’s it going ?
Bertrand Monnet: I’ve been working on the cartel for ten years. I was able to establish relationships with certain executives and I am in contact with people who belong to El Chapo’s entourage [Joaquín Guzmán], the historic leader of the cartel, who today is detained in the United States. This is what gives me these accesses.
Obviously afterwards, you have to gain confidence, you especially have to accept dozens of failures because very often, I can’t do what I want. People are wary, narcos are not people you approach like that. But once the trust is there, once they understand what I want to do and above all, that I will protect their identity, it is possible. It is ultimately my duty to go into the field to observe, which I then teach.
Have you been able to visit one of the laboratories where fentanyl is manufactured?
I went to one of the thousands of small laboratories that manufacture fentanyl throughout the Sinaloa region, and specifically in Culiacan, its capital, which is the stronghold of the cartel. The cartel has chosen the strategy of dispersing the production of this drug because it is today the subject of real repression, of real tracking by the Mexican authorities under pressure from the American administration of Joe Biden.
Rather than risk having the goods seized if the army or police arrive at a large laboratory, they divide production into thousands of small laboratories. So I visited one of these small labs, with “coccinero”, the term in narco jargon which designates these workers. They are taking a risk for their lives because the vapors are very, very toxic.
What products are used to make this drug?
I’m not going to give the recipe for this drug because it still kills 130,000 people per year in the United States. They use fentanyl which is a drug, a very powerful opioid analgesic, which is administered in hospital in tiny doses and which the narcotics manage to import from China. I was able to see the product with the label written in Chinese with the certificate of authenticity.
“They mix this drug with different chemicals, including acids which will transform it into a product which will not immediately kill its consumer, even if it is extremely strong. But above all with products which will transform a powder into a paste which will dry and can be transformed into pellets.”
Bertrand Monnet, specialist in the economics of crimeat franceinfo
These are the pellets that narcos produce by the tons. And it is in this form that fentanyl is trafficked because these small bags of hundreds of pellets are much easier to transport and market than kilos of powder, as they are for cocaine.
To get an idea of the scale, 40,000 pills are manufactured in 24 hours. A kilo of original product costs around $15,000. It sold for $400,000, right?
That’s a huge margin. That’s 2,400% margin. And we are only talking about the margin that is made in Mexico. In the following episodes [sur le site du journal Le Monde], I continue to work on this margin and we see that once the product is sold in the United States, the margin is even higher. It’s an incredible cash machine for the cartel.
Why are cartels interested in Europe?
When I question the cartel narcos, they explain to me that they are starting to explore the European market.
“Fentanyl has become the second cause of death in the United States after cardiovascular diseases, so it is a real social problem that the Biden administration has decided to fight against. So they know that it will become more and more complicated .”
Bertrand Monnet, specialist in the economics of crimeat franceinfo
LThe second reason they are starting to arrive here is that Europe is a market which they know very well because they already sell a lot of cocaine, particularly in France. They have commercial beachheads, they already have wholesalers. The margins are such that it is extremely interesting. It will be even more interesting in Europe for them because producing a fentanyl tablet costs less than a dollar per kilo, and the tablet is sold for 10 dollars in New York. The same product in Europe costs at least 15 euros. The margins will be even higher, so their motivation will be even stronger to come here.