In Mexico, the price of America’s hunger for heroin

Along the country’s heroin highway, signs of a booming drug business and horrific bloodshed
The Washington Post (US)
Tuesday, May 30, 2017

The opioid epidemic that has caused so much pain in the United States is also savaging Mexico, contributing to a breakdown of order in rural areas. Heroin is like steroids for drug gangs, pumping money and muscle into their fight to control territory and transportation routes to the United States. Mexico provides more than 90 percent of America’s heroin, up from less than 10 percent in 2003, when Colombia was the main supplier. Poppy production has expanded by about 800 percent in a decade as U.S. demand has soared.