With scientific data they tear down the NYT’s writing on fentanyl

Arturo Sánchez Jiménez and Emir Olivares

La Jornada Newspaper
Friday, January 3, 2025, p. 3

The federal government assured with scientific data that fentanyl cannot be produced in a domestic kitchen, as the newspaper stated The New York Times in a recent report. Federal officials explained yesterday that it is impossible to survive the toxicity of this opioid without specialized personal protection instruments and a laboratory equipped with professional ventilation.

Very simply, if what they were producing had been fentanyl, the operator, the person who was doing it, would have lasted 30 seconds and would have fallen dead as a result of the vapors presented by the synthesis. of the drug, summarized Alejandro Svarch, former director of the Federal Commission for the Protection Against Sanitary Risks and current head of the IMSS-Bienestar, regarding the work of the American newspaper, in which he states that two of its journalists entered a production laboratory of that substance in Culiacán, Sinaloa.

At the press conference of President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, officials from the Secretariats of Health, the Navy and Cofepris stated that the lethal dose of fentanyl begins at 0.2 milligrams, comparable to three or four grains of salt, so it is 50 times more powerful than morphine.

Sheinbaum Pardo declared that one of the elements that indicate that the report has no scientific basis is that it indicates that the alleged cooks They synthesize fentanyl without specialized protection, because they have acquired resistance to the toxicity of the drug.

Svarch pointed out that there is no scientific evidence of tolerance to the lethality of fentanyl and that it is assimilated by inhalation or through the skin or mucous membranes, so it is impossible to achieve its synthesis with a balaclava and survive, as alleged criminals do. that appear in the report.

Inexorably, he stated, to produce fentanyl a laboratory is required in which exposure conditions can be controlled, with specialized equipment and professional ventilation systems, not a domestic kitchen as the newspaper shows.

The head of Cofepris, Armida Zúñiga, added that given its toxicity, the slightest error in handling fentanyl can be lethal and cause adverse effects in at least 10 organs of the body.

Juana Peñaloza, a field precursor chemist analyst at Marina, who broke down the report in detail, indicated that it does not observe or mention the main chemical precursors to synthesize fentanyl, such as 4-ANPP, aniline and propionyl chloride, and that Only basic chemicals such as sodium hydroxide and acetone are shown.

Regarding the statements of the supposed cooks that the kitchen they use was moved in a few hours from another point, because before the videos were recorded, the Mexican Army dismantled the safe house where they had their headquarters. laboratoryPeñaloza assured that this accelerated change of location does not correspond to the usual criminal dynamics.

He declared that based on the information published there is not sufficient evidence to determine that a fentanyl hydrochloride synthesis process was carried out.

Sheinbaum Pardo rejected any foreign interference in the fight against illicit trafficking of fentanyl and other drugs and recalled that the New York Times “was the one who proposed at the time, among others, that there had been illicit financing in 2006, in the campaign of the then candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and that chemists and students were co-opted for drug production, when in reality we all know that the production of fentanyl and opioids comes from the pharmaceutical companies themselves.”