Amid Heroin Epidemic in US, Mexican Gov’t Doesn’t Know the Extent of Opium Cultivation at Home

As cheap Mexican heroin fuels an increase in addiction in the U.S., the Mexican government does not know how much opium is cultivated within the country’s borders even as production surges, according to investigators and a U.N. official. Illicit opium production in the mountains of the state of Guerrero “tripled in the last eight years”, according to Carlos Zamudio, an investigator with the citizen’s group CUPIHD, which lobbies to reduce the risks and harm associated with drugs. Poppies, cultivated for heroin, have traditionally been grown in the states of Durango, Chihuahua and Sinaloa in northern Mexico but cultivation has expanded further south into Oaxaca, Michoacán, and Guerrero, he said...more