Fentanyl has become a problem that is difficult to ignore. The powerful opioid, which causes the latest wave of overdose deaths in the United States, has been installed as a concern in the rest of the anti-drug agendas of America. Despite the little official information on the subject, the adulteration of drugs with different types of fentanyls has been making its way into the news. The most recent case is that of Argentina, where 24 people died from consuming cocaine mixed with carfentanil, a synthetic opioid used to sedate elephants. “Fentanyl is being sold everywhere. Mexico is already a producer and consumer,” says Silvia Cruz Martín del Campo (Mexico City, 1961), doctor in Pharmacobiology and researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the Polytechnic Institute of Mexico. “The adulteration of traditional drugs with fentanyls is a practice that is here to stay,” he adds.
