Drug Adulteration Warning: Mexican Pharmacies

Planning on going down South to score some cheap OTC benzos, opioids, muscle relaxers or stimulants from a Mexican pharmacy before the Summer's over?  Think again.  Reputable-looking pharmacies in some of the most popular tourist destinations like Tulum, Tijuana, Cabo San Lucas & Nuevo Progreso have been caught selling counterfeit medications supplied by cartels, with fake oxycodone, hydrocodone, Xanax and Adderall being among the most common offenders.  Yes, completely legit pharmacies are doing this shit & it has resulted in an unknown number of American deaths.  And yes, the FDA/U.S. government has known since at least 2019. 

Adderall (amphetamine) isn't even a legally prescribed drug in Mexico so that should be a huge tip off.  Sure enough, every single Mexican "amphetamine" sample tested came back positive for dangerous adulterants ranging from meth to aminorex--a drug banned all over the world since the '70s for causing fenfluramine-like heart & lung damage.  Fentanyl was found in both oxy- and hydrocodone samples, as well as other classes of non-opioid drugs like fake Xanax. 

Worse, traces of the non-opioid drug xylazine, known by the street name "tranq dope" also showed up in these pharmaceutical buys.  Xylazine is used in veterinary medicine as a tranquilizer of large animals like horses & has been declared a public health threat by the Biden-Harris administration as a deadly combination ingredient mixed with street fentanyl since April 2023.  This scary substance has become increasingly prevalent in the U.S. black market since the advent of fentanyl-specific laws that punish dealers when a customer ODs.  Because xylazine is not an opioid, naloxone has no effect on an overdose & it can't be detected by test strips the way fentanyl can, making it an effectively more dangerous adulterant. 

See that, drug warriors?  Those are the consequences of your actions in real time.

Some legitimate (not necessarily "safe") Mexican stimulants.

Once upon a time, Americans could go to Mexico and score legit pharmaceuticals without a prescription & even bring them back across the border with relative ease.  I know a couple older ladies who did it often.  Everything from hydrocodone to pentobarbital... anything you wanted.  But with the rise of illicit fentanyl, that time is over.  In fact Mexico is Ground Zero for the fentanyl epidemic worldwide so buyers should be hesitant purchasing street drugs in North America period since the cartels supply the bulk of them.  But if you go directly into Mexico as a gringo tourist and buy drugs, you should pretty much expect the worst whether you're standing in a back alley buying illicit drugs or a well-lit licensed pharmacy purchasing Rx meds.*   Yes, that includes drugs whose effects are the polar opposite of fentanyl, like cocaine, MDMA & meth.  No substance is safe.


Harm Reduction in the Time of Tranq Dope

The cartels are powerful but they can't taint every drug on the black or grey market, nor would they want to.  They aren't doing this because they hate Americans & want to punish us for our freedoms (lol), they do it to make a profit.  And it's not profitable or a good use of time to bother adding drugs like fentanyl to substances that are weak, obscure or not highly popular in wealthy drug-using countries like the U.S. or UK.  And if the drug is legal or damn near legal in its country of origin, they REALLY aren't gonna risk adding illegal street drugs to it because that would waste time & money while adding to the risk.  The goal of adulterating drugs is to reduce cost and risk and boost profits like fentanyl does when substituted for, say, heroin which requires entire fields of poppies to be grown, harvested & processed into morphine and then heroin.  That's because fentanyl is more potent per milligram and fully synthetic, requiring no poppies to be grown or processed.  Fentanyl is actually active in micrograms.

If you must buy meds from Mexico (please don't), opt for safer stimulant options like fenproporex, clobenzorex, mazindol, diethylpropion & Acxion (Phentermine) over Adderall or other amphetamines.  All of these are either considered weak & undesirable (Phentermine) in the States, are not prescribed here (clobenzorex) or are completely unheard of (fenproporex).  Despite this, some are quite potent & have definite medicinal value, particularly if you suffer from ADHD or need a weight loss aid.  Unlike our Schedule II stimulants, these are far less tightly regulated in Mexico which means the likelihood of adulteration is lower.  They're also obscure in the U.S. which means cartels aren't as likely to tamper with them because there's not a huge market of (comparatively) rich gringos seeking them out.

As for pain medications, this chart shows some of the most common meds prescribed in palliative care clinics in Mexico:

This list is not all-inclusive.  

 

The best way to find out which pharmaceuticals are legal in a given country is to Google the molecule name to find out what brand names they're sold by there, as they won't always be called "MS Contin" or "Valium" or whatever we call it here.  (For instance, Google "Diazepam brand name Mexico"). 

Always use the molecule name when Googling--i.e. alprazolam, not "Xanax"--and go from there.  You can often find more results on Google Images than the regular search page.  Cartels often choose a popular brand-name American drug like "Adderall" or "Xanax bars" and make fakes containing fentanyl & other deadly drugs, which is what makes those particular substances so risky.  Why American drugs?  Because we consume more prescription and illegal drugs than any nation on the planet, our overdose & addiction crisis dwarfing that of other peer nations like Portugal, France or Germany.  

We are #1.  🇺🇲  (via Commonwealthfund.org)

As for Diazepam:  You may find fake Valium for sale in Mexico, but ain't nobody making fake "Ifafonal".  Tourists would look at you like you were crazy if you tried to sell them Ifafonal on the street (little do they know it's just the Mexican brand name for Diazepam). If a medication comes in a blister pack inside a box with a fold-out set of dosing instructions, it's more likely to be legit than anything that's sold individually as loose pills in a bottle or bag even if they come from a reputable pharmacy/farmacia.  This is no guarantee so you'll still need to use a fentanyl test strip to rule out that nasty class of adulterants, but it's certainly better than the alternative.  Legitimate medications are NEVER sold by the pill and they weren't even before the fentanyl crisis when U.S. tourists bought Rx meds without a prescription in Mexico, so this should be an instant red flag that the drug you're buying is from a cartel origin and not safe to ingest.

The totally random brand name of Mexican diazepam.

While less popular medicines might still be of questionable quality in other countries (shady binders/fillers, expired, sat out in the sun too long), they're far less likely to be completely adulterated because the profit motive is not there.  Black market vendors target the most potent and/or popular drugs in a given market, not the weaker or more obscure ones.  That means if heroin & OxyContin are the opioids-of-choice of addicts & are constantly talked about by the media in the U.S, cartels are not going to bother tampering with codeine, kratom or tramadol pills, let alone even more obscure opioids like Darvocet or Tapentadol.  However that could always change if the popularity of those drugs increases dramatically or if drug laws change suddenly. 

That's the thing about the illegal drug market:  nothing is set in stone.  It's an ever-changing entity with dangers that morph & change with the seasons.  Which is why legalization is so critically important.  Yet we're going in the opposite direction, continuing to criminalize each new compound as it comes along, resulting in the disaster we have now with nitazenes & tranq dope.  

When in doubt, use a $1 fentanyl test strip on your pills or powders, and keep in mind that there is no test for nitazenes or xylazine (tranq dope).  If something seems too good to be true, it likely is.  Reputable pharmacies don't give out loose pills from bottles or bags to tourists with no prescription, let alone for as cheap as some of these pharmacies are doing it. 

If you absolutely MUST use a drug you bought in a Mexican pharmacy, start with a tiny sub-therapeutic tester dose to check for allergies/adulteration & never use alone.  Make sure your sober friend has naloxone on hand and knows how to administer it.  It will generally keep you alive until an ambulance arrives if the adulterant is a fentanyl analogue.  But "alive" doesn't guarantee no brain or other organ damage & your life is worth so much more than any cheap high.  Also keep in mind that naloxone is worthless for adulterants like xylazine, which is not an opioid. 

Short of full legalization, not giving your money to cartel scum & their supporters is the best way to starve these greedy bastards out.  💚

North American Nightmare:  Liquid fentanyl found in Canada for 1st time recently.  

* Not all pharmacies in Mexico are implicated in this practice.  The only ones found to be doing it are the ones willing to supply customers with prescription drugs without a prescription.  They often keep loose pills in bags or bottles under/behind the counter & sell them by the pill to anyone who asks.  Also:  "legitimate" does not necessarily = "safe".  A medicine can be unsafe despite containing only the ingredients listed on the label.  The Mexican weight loss drug Redotex is a good example of this.  Always do your due diligence before taking any substance.  Know your body, know your drug & know your source.