Or something.
From the New York Times, April 7:
SAN MIGUEL AMOLTEPEC VIEJO, Mexico — For years, two young brothers, like many other farmers in their poor, mountainous region of southwest Mexico, found salvation in the opium poppy. They bled the milky latex from its pods and the profits made their hard lives a little easier.
The fact that this substance was the raw material for most of the heroin consumed in the United States was of little concern to the family, if they even knew it at all. But then changes in that distant market for illegal drugs made the price of the dried opium latex plummet.
“I don’t know what happened and suddenly the price fell,” recalled the older brother Ricardo, 19, who was raised here in San Miguel Amoltepec Viejo, a tiny hamlet in the La Montaña region of Guerrero state. “We could no longer buy a lot of things: corn, all the necessities.”The crop had once yielded profits beyond any other. But a price drop of about 90 percent over the past year and a half has plunged farmers in this village and hundreds of others scattered across the rugged slopes of La Montaña, into extreme poverty.Many of them have joined the soaring numbers of Central Americans and others who have migrated north, causing a crisis along the southwestern American border that has worsened tensions between Mexico and the Trump administration.Ricardo and his 17-year-old brother were among them. They now pick strawberries in California. Ricardo asked to be identified by his first name only because he is an undocumented immigrant.
CreditBrett Gundlock for The New York TimesThe reason for the sudden fall in opium demand is a matter of speculation, but is almost certainly related to changes in the supply and demand of illegal drugs in the United States, officials and experts in Mexico and the United States say.Some evidence is emerging that fentanyl, a powerful and highly addictive synthetic opiate, is replacing heroin and other drugs, particularly on the East Coast. The soaring production of heroin in recent years may also have accounted for the recent drop....MUCH MORE
Of course it's the fentanyl. Here's the U.S - China Economic and Security Review Commission's February 2017 report: "Fentanyl: China’s Deadly Export to the United States".
Additionally there is another opioid called carfentanil that is so powerful it is classified as a banned chemical weapon.
Back in January Borderland Beat (caution: they cover the cartels and it can get awful) was reporting:
The Borderland Beat reporters are either the bravest or the most foolhardy journos in the world.
So far in 2019, six Mexican reporters have been murdered.
