How Criminal Decisions Over the Drug Market Impact Public Health in Northern Mexico

The fentanyl crisis has ravaged the United States, with overdoses causing the deaths of more than 160,000 deaths, between 2020 and 2023. But, 2024 marked a possible turning point, with overdose deaths falling by nearly 27 percent—the largest single-year decline on record. Meanwhile, in Mexico, fentanyl has quietly reshaped drug markets and upended some widely held assumptions of how larger criminal groups interact with these markets. As local criminal organizations became major producers and exporters of the synthetic opioid to the United States, domestic consumption also emerged in key trafficking corridors.How Criminal Decisions Over the Drug Market Impact Public Health in Northern Mexico | Written by Juan Carlos Garzon and Victoria Dittmar, and read by Liza Schmidt.Visit insightcrime.org for more information.