Mexico has closed nearly two dozen pharmacies along its Caribbean coast – after a US report warned drugstores in the country were selling counterfeit opioids passed off as prescriptions to tourists.
The series of closures in Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Tulum came after a four-day FBI inspection raid on stores — which targeted 55 businesses and found nearly half of them to have irregular sales.
In March, the US State Department issued a travel warning about the illegal sale of pills like Oxycodone, Percocet, and Adderall passed off as prescription drugs, but often made from unapproved substances such as fentanyl.
Days earlier, a research report by tFound the University of California in Los Angeles drugstores in the most renowned destinations in the world offered foreigners pills that were billed as the prescriptions – without proper documentation from doctors.
The Mexican Navy announced the arrest on Tuesday, revealing not only the stores that had closed offered the pills exclusively to tourists, but that the shops systematically advertised such pills and even offered home delivery services.
Mexico has closed 23 pharmacies along its Caribbean coast – after a US report warned drugstores in the country were selling counterfeit opioids passed off as prescriptions to tourists
It comes months after the US State Department issued a travel warning about the illegal sale of pills passed off as prescriptions, which are instead made from unapproved substances such as fentanyl – which has affected more than 325,000 people in the US since 2014. has killed
Fentanyl – about 100 times more potent than morphine – is responsible for about 100,000 deaths per year in the US, not counting deaths abroad.
Over the past eight years, the opioid on the southern border has been funneled into the country in increasing quantities – with some 8,400 kilograms of the overdose-inducing drug seized by 2022.
During that time, an estimated 325,000 people in the US died from overdoses of synthetic opioids, such as those sold by the raided Mexican stores, which experts say are almost always made from fentanyl.
Aside from being much more potent than others on the black market, the drug is mass-produced by Mexican cartels, who make it from chemical precursors smuggled in from China, then press it into pills designed to look like as other medicines.
The practice is illegal and has been on the radar of federal authorities for nearly a year, according to statements by the State Department and other US groups.
The Navy announced the sting operation on Tuesday, saying it found obsolete drugs and some whose suppliers were unknown, as well as blank or unsigned prescription forms.
The fruits of the bust show how the practice of selling pills abroad is now widespread – something officials have been warning about since the beginning of the year.
UCLA released a report showing that 68 percent of 40 Mexican pharmacies visited in four cities in northern Mexico sold Adderall and Oxycodone
The Mexican Navy announced the arrest on Tuesday, revealing that the stores that closed not only offered the pills exclusively to tourists, but that the stores systematically advertised such pills and even offered home delivery services
In February, UCLA announced that researchers had found that 68 percent of 40 Mexican pharmacies visited in four cities in northern Mexico sold Oxycodone, Xanax, or Adderall. About 27 percent of those stores, the school said, sold fake pills
The Mexican Navy did not confirm that pills containing fentanyl were found in the recent raid, but said drugs were seized for testing to see if they contained fentanyl.
In February, UCLA announced that researchers had found that 68 percent of 40 Mexican pharmacies visited in four cities in northern Mexico sold Oxycodone, Xanax, or Adderall.
About 27 percent of those stores, the school said, sold fake pills.
UCLA said the investigation published in January found that “physical pharmacies in northern Mexican tourist towns sell counterfeit pills containing fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamine.”
“These pills are mainly sold to American tourists and are often presented as controlled substances such as Oxycodone, Percocet and Adderall.”
“These counterfeit pills pose a serious overdose risk to buyers who believe they are receiving a known amount of a weaker drug,” Chelsea Shover, assistant professor-in-residence of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine, said in February.
In March, the State Department issued a travel warning – ominously declaring that counterfeit pills sold in pharmacies in Mexico “contain potentially lethal doses of fentanyl.”
The Mexican Navy did not confirm that pills containing fentanyl were found in the recent raid, but said drugs were seized for testing to see if they contained fentanyl.
Those results have yet to be released.