The area planted with poppy in Mexico increased 12% between 2019 and 2020, according to a United Nations report, which places the country among the three largest growers of this heroin precursor.
Illegal crops thus went from 21,500 hectares identified between 2018-2019, to 24,100 in the 2019-2020 period, said the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in the document presented in Mexico City.
Those figures keep Mexico among the three largest opium gum producers in the world along with Afghanistan and Myanmar.
Find out: Guerrero farmers change poppy crops for marijuana to make products with it
“Despite eradication campaigns by the Mexican government, the opium gum market persists and remains a very profitable activity (…). It can be stored for long periods of time allowing it to be marketed when conditions are optimal,” the report states.
The agency stresses that even though the impact of the pandemic on drug production is not known, preliminary analyses suggest that the economic crisis unleashed by COVID-19 made the cultivation of illicit plantations “more attractive for fragile rural communities.”
The so-called “Golden Triangle”, where the northern states of Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Durango converge, is the area that concentrates the largest poppy crops.
Large concentrations were also located in Nayarit (northwest), Guerrero and Oaxaca (south), UNODC adds.
Strategic for drug trafficking to the neighboring United States, Mexico is hit by a wave of violence linked to drug cartels, which have also managed to take over spaces of political power.
State and federal authorities have suggested that decriminalizing poppy cultivation could help defuse fighting between criminal groups, but no action has been taken.
According to official figures, Mexico has recorded more than 340,000 murders, mostly attributed to criminal organizations, since launching a controversial military anti-drug offensive in December 2006. From that year on, the cases of missing persons also skyrocketed, totaling about 108,000.
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