Why America’s Republicans want to bomb Mexico

MEXICANS AREDEA used to their country being used as a during American election seasons. In 2015, in a to launch his presidential campaign, Donald Trump accused Mexico of sending drug-traffickers, rapists and other criminals to America and promised to make Mexico’s government pay for a wall along the border. His comments look almost friendly compared with the rhetoric this year. At the first on August 23rd nearly all the candidates spoke in favour of bombing the laboratories of drug gangs south of the border, which make fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, said he would send special forces into Mexico “on day one” in the (unlikely) event that he were to win the presidency. Why?America is in the midst of an . Since fentanyl in 2014, the drug has been the biggest killer of 18- to 45-year-old Americans. It is 50 times stronger than heroin. Some 70,000 Americans died from synthetic opioids in 2021—almost all of those deaths involved fentanyl, which is often . Most of the fentanyl they consumed is believed to come from south of the border. Drug gangs, predominantly the Sinaloa cartel based in the north-west of Mexico, import chemical precursors from China to cook into fentanyl in clandestine labs. Making fentanyl is a profitable business. America’s Drug Enforcement Administration () reckons it costs the Sinaloa cartel just ten cents to make a pill that they can then sell wholesale to dealers for 50.