All night, Daniela stares at screens in the warehouse where she works as a security guard. The challenge is to stay awake. So, before every shift, she smokes crystal meth for the euphoric focus it gives her.
When Donald Trump threatened a 25% tariff on all imports from Mexico if it did not stop fentanyl crossing the border, Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, shot back with a public letter stating that it was drug demand in the US that caused crime and death in Mexico. “We don’t consume synthetic drugs,” she asserted.
But Daniela is one of many in Mexico who do – only it is not fentanyl, but the ultra-cheap cristal that is Mexico’s synthetic drug of choice. Its use among workers, partiers and the young has soared, threatening a public health crisis that state services are ill-equipped to face.
Back in the 2000s, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) cracked down on US labs cooking methamphetamine – the potent, crystalline form of which is known as crystal meth – displacing production to Mexico and its organised crime groups.
Now, in addition to sending tonnes of amphetamines to the US – where its use has resurged, often in combination with fentanyl – organised crime groups also sell much more in Mexico itself, and fight to control local markets.
There is no current data on drug consumption in Mexico. But the government recently released data about which drugs people were seeking treatment for – and in almost 50% of cases, it was methamphetamines.
“The trend is up,” said Juan Manuel Quijada Gaytán, former national commissioner of Conasama, Mexico’s mental health and addiction commission. “From 2013 to 2023, [the number of people seeking treatment for methamphetamine use] increased by 416%.”
This tallies with what researchers on the ground are seeing.
“Methamphetamine dominates in every state,” said Alejandra García de Loera, a drug policy researcher, adding that, in Aguascalientes, where she lives, “marijuana, cocaine – they’ve basically been displaced by it”.
Crystal meth is widely used by people working in factories, farming and trucking to work harder and longer, even through the night.
“It’s a functional drug, up to a point,” said Falko Ernst, a researcher of organized crime in Mexico. “It’s become a pretty standardised item to help people withstand the pressures of work.”
It’s also becoming more popular as a recreational drug, and for chemsex, particularly in Mexico City’s LGBTQ+ community.
This rapid spread has been driven by ease of access and low retail price. “Here, a gram of cocaine is about $50, but a gram of crystal meth is more like $6,” said García de Loera. “I’d say it’s easier to get meth than marijuana.”
This reflects the fact that methamphetamine has become cheaper to make. Ernst said wholesale prices in Michoacán, a leading state for meth production, have fallen from $15,000 per kilo to more like $600 over the last two decades.
The social impact of Mexico’s methamphetamine boom is understudied. Anecdotally, the impact is substantial.
Outside one of Conasama’s community treatment centres in Edomex, the industrial state that surrounds Mexico City, the walls are plastered with peeling lucha libre adverts. Inside is a meeting room with stacked seats and a podium draped with an Alcoholics Anonymous banner.
Claudia Sarahi Bernal Martínez, the centre’s lead doctor, said that 60% of people who come in seeking help for crystal meth are minors – many sent by their schools.
The centres offer a psychological evaluation, followed by monthly appointments with doctors, psychologists and social workers. They refer people to psychiatrists for pharmacological therapy.
There are 341 such centres across the country, each with roughly five staff. Another 110 juvenile integration centres specifically cater to minors, and a small number of centres offer residential treatment.
But independent experts say it’s far from enough.
“In practice, it’s not the government that is delivering most services for rehab,” said Jaime Arredondo, a researcher who studies drug issues in Tijuana. “It’s private centres, the anexos.”
Anexos are places where relatives can pay to imprison a drug-using family member against their will for a matter of months, forcing them to go cold turkey.
Many anexos are set up by someone who has had a drug problem themselves, and run along the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous, with a focus on routine and discipline.
“They’re like jail for people who do drugs,” said Arredondo. “Some of them involve corporal punishment, abuse, torture.”
Over the last decade, there have also been at least a dozen attacks by criminal groups on anexos. One massacre in Guanajuato in 2020 left 28 dead.
The motives behind the massacres are rarely clear, but some speculate that it could be revenge against people trying to dissociate themselves from an organised crime group – many low-level operators themselves use crystal meth – or that the anexos in question are doubling as cartel safe houses.
According to Conasama, there are thousands of anexos across the country, of which perhaps 10% operate within the law. Mexico has regulated some, and closed others.
Whatever the methods, the anexos rarely produce lasting results: many people relapse immediately.
“Once people come out, they face the same realities as before,” said Ernst. “And they fall back into the same habits soon after.”
Daniela’s father has put her in anexos several times, but she has always gone back to using. “My addiction is stronger than my will. Much stronger,” she said.
“What we need are places that respect human rights, that are evidence-based, and where people don’t have to spend a lot of money to treat their family members,” said Arredondo. “And the Mexican state doesn’t provide that.”
