Chicago – U.S. agents, working in cooperation with the Mexican government, have closed down a lab in Mexico that might be the main source of a powerful painkiller that has killed at least 100 heroin users in eight U.S. states, the federal drug czar said Monday.
John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said it’s still not clear whether the painkiller, fentanyl, was mixed with heroin at the lab in Mexico or after it entered the United States.
“There may be more than one source,” Walters said. “We think this is the principal source.”
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is testing samples of fentanyl seized in a May 28 raid of a suspected fentanyl-manufacturing operation near Guadalajara but has not yet confirmed that the drug is linked to the U.S. deaths, DEA spokesman Steve Robertson said.
“We hope to have a break in the case, but we’re not sure this is it,” Robertson said.
Five Mexican citizens were arrested during the May bust, including one Walters described as the chemist.
Walters said that the dealers may have started using fentanyl because they were looking for a competitive advantage on the street, but that inept mixing – or cutting – of the drug combination made it deadly.
He also warned that millions of deadly doses of the fentanyl-laced heroin might still be on the streets.
Doctors prescribe fentanyl as a painkiller for cancer patients and others in chronic pain. It’s about 80 times as potent as morphine.
