New testing by Times reporters has revealed that some pharmacies in cities across Mexico sell counterfeit medication tainted with fentanyl and methamphetamine.
Some of the pills looked just like antibiotics. Others were unlabeled white tablets. Several mimicked well-known American pills, and a few came in sealed bottles.
Some of the pills came from drugstores in seaside destinations including Playa del Carmen, Cozumel, Tulum, Los Cabos and Puerto Vallarta. Others were purchased in Tijuana and Nuevo Progreso, border towns with booming medical and pharmaceutical tourism sectors. It’s often not clear whether pharmacy clerks and owners know they are selling deadly counterfeits. Some drugstore workers warned about the risk of laced pills and “homemade Adderall,” but none offered any explanation when they were contacted later.
“One of the greatest threats to the safety and health of Americans today are fake prescription pills sold as legitimate medication when in fact they are not — they are fentanyl,” Milgram’s statement said. “In 2022, the DEA seized over 58 million pills containing fentanyl in the United States. We are continuing our enforcement and education efforts on this important issue to save lives.”
To buy pills for testing, reporters walked into drugstores in tourist areas and asked — usually in English — for Adderall and either Percocet or oxycodone. Sometimes clerks would say they didn’t have the pills, but often they would pull out a chart of offerings. “We don’t know exactly when this started, and we don’t know how widespread it is,” Chelsea Shover, the study’s senior researcher, told The Times in February. “The most important unknown is probably how many people have died or had serious health consequences from it, and we don’t have any idea.
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