Mexican authorities announced Thursday a recent lab bust that turned up 595 pounds of fentanyl, which is the equivalent of 14 million doses of the drug.
The Mexican Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection and other agencies raided two homes in Villa de Alvarez in the Pacific coast state of Colima, nearly 300 miles west of Mexico City.
Inside, they found 270 kilograms, or 595 pounds of fentanyl in both pill and powdered forms, the Mexican agency said.
The authorities arrested six suspects, including the alleged leader of the criminal group that was using the two facilities. They did not name any of the people arrested.
America’s Drug Enforcement Administration said it shared intelligence that led to the successful raid. The DEA also linked the six suspects to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which the DEA called a “foreign terrorist organization.”
“Removing this weapon of mass destruction from the supply chain potentially saved millions of lives and disrupted a major CJNG trafficking network. We commend the Government of Mexico and the brave law enforcement personnel who carried out this mission,” DEA Administrator Terrance Cole said on social media.
The Mexican Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection did not say how much the seized narcotics would have sold for on the street.
The Mexican record for the largest seizure of fentanyl was set in late 2024, when a bust in the country’s Sinaloa state turned up a total of 1,100 kilograms, over 1.2 tons of the stuff, equivalent to 20 million doses.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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