Mexican cartel aims to grab the global market in meth

Mexico’s most powerful drug cartel appears to be expanding methamphetamine production on a massive scale, filling a gap left by the breakdown of a rival gang that was once the top trafficker of the synthetic drug.

The globe-spanning Sinaloa cartel is suspected of dealing record tons of drugs and precursor chemicals processed in industrial-sized operations.

The apparent increase in the Sinaloa group’s involvement comes as the Mexican government says it has dismantled the La Familia gang with key arrests and killings of its leadership.

Methamphetamine production, gauged by seizures of labs and drugs in Mexico, has increased dramatically since 2008.

Mexican authorities have made two major busts in as many months in the quiet central state of Queretaro. In one case, they seized nearly 500 tons of precursor chemicals. Another netted 3.4 tons of pure meth, which at $15,000 a pound would have a street value of more than $100 million (£61m).

Authorities said they couldn’t put a value on the precursors, which were most likely headed for a 300ft-long industrial processing lab found buried 12ft deep in a farm field in the cartel’s home, Sinaloa state.

Steve Preisler, an American industrial chemist who wrote the book Secrets of Methamphetamine Manufacture and is sometimes called the father of modern meth-making, said “the quantity is just amazing.”

“It is a huge amount of starting material, which would allow them to dominate the world market.”

Preisler, who served three years in prison more than 20 years ago, added that the most efficient production methods would yield about half the weight of the precursors in uncut meth, or 200 to 250 tons, which could be worth billions of dollars.

The Mexican government says its offensive against La Familia, a pseudo- religious gang based in western Michoacan state that was once the country’s main meth producer, is one of the key successes in its crackdown on organised crime and drug-trafficking. Founder Nazario Moreno Gonzalez was killed in a two-day shoot-out with police in December. His right-hand man, Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas, who allegedly ran the meth operations, was arrested in June.

Other gangs are now trying to fill the void.

Sinaloa, headed by fugitive drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, tends to think big: in mid-July, Mexican soldiers found a 300-acre marijuana field in Baja California. The army said labourers working for the Sinaloa cartel planted thousands of plants and irrigated and fertilised them.

But no-one was prepared for the size of the meth network officials found earlier this year in Queretaro, one of Mexico’s safest states in terms of drug violence.

When soldiers raided three warehouses on 15 June, they thought they had found 1,462 50-gallon drums filled with various precursors. But when experts examined the stash, they found 3.4 tons of pure meth.

Some speculate that Sinaloa is trying to reach even beyond the US market, which it finds easiest to access.

Police in Malaysia arrested three Mexicans in 2008 at a meth factory. Such an Asian connection would be a natural link for the cartel, since most of Mexico’s precursor chemicals come from the region.