Mexican traffickers starting to produce own fentanyl

Mexican drug traffickers have begun to set up their own laboratories to produce fentanyl, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said. The US has put pressure on China to crack down on laboratories exporting fentanyl to the US market. Precursor chemicals have been found in Mexico and manufacturing labs are beginning to develop. In March the UN drugs body named two precursors, 4-anilino-N-phenethylpiperidine (ANPP) and N-phenethyl-4-piperidone (NPP) to their controlled list. An analog called butyrfentanyl was also added. In October the precursors were placed under international control.

In May police raided a Northborough Mass storage facility and seized about 50 kilograms of N-Phenethyl-4-piperidinone. That amount of NPP could theoretically produce more than 19 million doses of fentanyl. Potential street value according to the police was $570 million.