Mexico police celebrate ‘biggest ever’ meth lab raid

Mexican authorities discovered a huge laboratory for the production of synthetic drugs where they seized 80 tons of methamphetamines, with a market value of more than 600 million dollars

(EPA)

Mexican armed forces said on Monday they had dismantled a clandestine meth “mega-laboratory” in northern Sonora state, marking the largest drug laboratory busted under the current administration.

“This is the largest laboratory we have secured during the current administration and represents more than 50% of the drugs and precursors seized this year,” Mexico’s navy said in a statement on X, alongside photos showing large containers and white sacks at the rural camp near Rancho Viejo.

The navy said it had seized 4.13 metric tons (91,073 lb) of meth and 1.27 tons of precursor chemicals used to make the synthetic drug.

The site counted 72 laboratory reactors, it added, five times more than the 13 discovered at what was previously considered the country’s largest clandestine lab, which had also been discovered in Sonora.

The U.S. has been pushing Mexico to crack down on drug trafficking, particularly fentanyl, even as leaked documents revealed the Mexican army revised up the number of drug lab raids it said it had conducted under the administration of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is in his final year of office.

A view of a clandestine lab to process synthetic drugs seized by the Mexican Navy

(via REUTERS)

Mexico has meanwhile been pushing for the United States to take a firmer stance on the illicit trafficking of firearms from the United States to drug cartels across the border.

Photos distributed by the navy showed a series of large metal boilers and chemical reactors arranged in a line amid the brush and low trees of the site, which was visible from the air. Over 200 centrifuges, boilers and condensing chambers were discovered, according to the navy. The navy said its personnel destroyed the equipment, but it did not specify when the raid took place.

Previously, most big meth labs had been found in Sinaloa, but it appears the increasingly violent state of Sonora has become a center of production, and not just a smuggling route.