Fentanyl, the drug that "did not exist" to seize more than 600 kg in one year

From denial to seizure

During the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico denied being a producer of fentanyl. The then federal president assured that Mexican territory was only a transit country for drugs that came from China.

“Mexico is not the country that introduces the most fentanyl to the United States. I maintain that more fentanyl reaches Canada and the United States, here they make pills and punch out blue pills,” López Obrador said in March 2023.

When a seizure containing fentanyl and methamphetamines from Qingdao, China was made at the Port of Lázaro Cárdenas, López Obrador assured that it was proof that the substance came from Asia.

Under President Sheinbaum, the tone has not completely changed. Before Donald Trump assumed the presidency of the United States, he rejected that the entire fentanyl manufacturing process occurred on Mexican soil.

“The fact that precursors arrive, because most of the precursors come from Asia, and that the entire process is manufactured here in Mexico, has not been found,” said the January 7, 2025 .

However, under pressure from the Trump government, the seizure of fentanyl accelerated in Mexico.

From October 2024 to December 2025, President Sheinbaum’s government has seized 1.8 tons and more than 4 million fentanyl pills. The figure represents 20% of the 9,000 kilograms of that drug that were seized during the López Obrador government.

Security specialist Alberto Guerrero Baena suggests that the Mexican government went from denying the manufacture of fentanyl to accelerating its seizure, due to constant pressure from Donald Trump.

“From one moment to the next it changed from a denial to a recognition and an attack that gave results against fentanyl from the beginning because the Mexican authorities had already detected where the laboratories were. They began to act quickly,” says the expert.

Alejandro Martínez, security expert and professor at La Salle, agrees. “With the strong tariff pressures by the Trump government, that narrative in less than a year has changed drastically and Mexico is collaborating with the Donald Trump government,” he highlights.