Sinaloa cartel, the global drug cartel formerly headed by now-incarcerated Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzmán, has laid down the law, banning all fentanyl production — or else. Sinaloa, in northwest Mexico, is the key area of the trafficking of the synthetic drug, which has flooded into the United States in recent years. In 2022, there were 73,654 fentanyl overdose deaths in the US, which the USA Facts government website notes is “more than double” the amount of deaths three years earlier in 2019. El Chapo took the cartel’s business worldwide and became the global supplier of narcotics, with Mexican-sourced heroin, Columbian-grown cocaine and fentanyl derived from ingredients found in Asia. He was found guilty of narco-trafficking and now serves a life sentence at a maximum security prison in Colorado. The ban came at the behest of El Chapo’s four grown sons — the “Chapitos” — who took over the cartel when he went to prison. The men have been fielding “mounting law enforcement crackdowns on the drug trade," the Wall Street Journal reported Monday. The Chapitos arranged for billboards and banners to be put up beside roads and strewn across overpasses in its local city of Culiacan, Sinaloa, announcing the halt in production of the deadly opioid. “In Sinaloa, the sale, manufacture, transport or any kind of business involving the substance known as fentanyl, including the sale of chemical products for its elaboration, is permanently banned,” one of the signs said. “You have been warned. Sincerely yours, the Chapitos.”US officials “with knowledge of the cartel” told the WSJ they are doubtful the ban will have an impact on the drug trafficking problem — in fact they are concerned the move might skyrocket the trafficking of other drugs such as cocaine and heroin. “In the aggregate, it won’t mean anything,” one law enforcement official said. “They think if they do this, they won’t take as much heat.”Though the banners are a new marketing strategy for the cartel, the message is not. In June, three bodies were discovered outside Culiacan covered in fentanyl. The police attribute the murder to the cartel as a message to the other traffickers — fentanyl is off limits. Over the last 10 days, there have been about a dozen instances of kidnapping reported in the region. Police suspect the kidnappings are also related to the fentanyl ban.
