After five years of booming fentanyl trafficking in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, “the bosses,” as he called the Sinaloa Cartel faction of the Chapitos, issued a blunt directive: stop all production in the state.

Sinaloa had long been the epicenter in Mexico of illicit fentanyl production, a synthetic opioid linked to hundreds of thousands of overdoses across North America over the past decade. According to US authorities, the Chapitos – the sons of the infamous drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán – were among the key figures driving this epidemic.

How Fentanyl Producers in Mexico Are Adapting to a Challenging Market | Written by Victoria Dittmar and Paulina Ríos, and narrated by Victoria Dittmar.

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