Mexico closes 23 pharmacies in tourist resort towns for selling counterfeit pills like Oxy and Adderall

Mexico has shuttered nearly two dozen pharmacies along its Caribbean coast – after a US report warned drug stores in the country were selling fake opioids passed off as prescriptions to tourists.

The string of closures in Cancun, Playa del Carmen, and Tulum came after a four-day inspection raid by feds on stores – during which 55 businesses were targeted, and nearly half were found to have irregular sales.

In March, the U.S. State Department issued a travel warning about illegal sales of pills like Oxycodone, Percocet and Adderall, passed off as prescriptions but often made of unsanctioned substances such as fentanyl.

Days earlier, a research report from the University of California in Los Angeles found drug stores across the most renowned destinations in the world were offering foreigners pills billed as the prescriptions – without any of the proper documentation from doctors.

The Mexico Navy announced the bust Tuesday, revealing the stores that were shut down not only offered the pills exclusively to tourists, but that the stores systematically advertised such pills and even offered home delivery services.

Mexico has shuttered 23 pharmacies along its Caribbean coast – after a US report warned drug stores in the country were selling fake opioids passed off as prescriptions to tourists

It comes months after the US State Department issued a travel warning about illegal sales of pills passed off as prescriptions, that are instead made of unsanctioned substances such as fentanyl – which has killed more than 325,000 people across the US since 2014

Fentanyl – approximately 100 times more potent than morphine – is responsible for about 100,000 deaths each year in the US, not including deaths overseas.

Over the past eight years, the opioid has been funneled into the country in increasing amounts at the southern border – with some 8,400 kilograms of the overdose-inducing drug seized in 2022. 

During the time, a believed 325,000 people died in the US have died from overdoses involving synthetic opioids like the ones sold by the raided Mexican stores, which experts say are almost always made of fentanyl.

Aside from being far more powerful than others on the black market, the drug is mass produced by Mexican cartels, who make it from precursor chemical smuggled in from China, and then press it into pills designed to look like other medications.

The practice is illegal, and has been on the radar of federal authorities for the better part of a year, statements from the State Department and other US groups have revealed.

Announcing the covert operation Tuesday, the Navy said it found outdated medications and some for which there was no record of the supplier, as well as blank or unsigned prescription forms. 

The fruits of the bust show how the practice of shilling the pills overseas is now widespread – something officials have warned about since the start of the year.

UCLA released a report found that 68 percent of the 40 Mexican pharmacies visited in four northern Mexico cities sold Adderall and Oxycodone

The Mexico Navy announced the bust Tuesday, revealing the stores that were shut down not only offered the pills exclusively to tourists, but that the stores systematically advertised such pills and even offered home delivery services

In February, UCLA announced researchers had found that 68 percent of the 40 Mexican pharmacies visited in four northern Mexico cities sold Oxycodone, Xanax or Adderall. Some 27 percent of those stores, the school said, were selling fake pills

The Mexican Navy did not confirm that any fentanyl-laced pills had been found in the recent raid, but said medications had been seized to test whether they contained fentanyl

In February, UCLA announced researchers had found that 68 percent of the 40 Mexican pharmacies visited in four northern Mexico cities sold Oxycodone, Xanax or Adderall.

Some 27 percent of those stores, the school said, were selling fake pills.

UCLA said the study, published in January, found that ‘brick and mortar pharmacies in Northern Mexican tourist towns are selling counterfeit pills containing fentanyl, heroin, and methamphetamine.

‘These pills are sold mainly to US tourists, and are often passed off as controlled substances such as Oxycodone, Percocet, and Adderall.’

‘These counterfeit pills represent a serious overdose risk to buyers who think they are getting a known quantity of a weaker drug,’ Chelsea Shover, assistant professor-in-residence of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine, said in February.

In March, the State Department issued it travel warning – ominously stating that counterfeit pills being sold at pharmacies in Mexico ‘may contain deadly doses of fentanyl.’

The Mexican Navy did not confirm that any fentanyl-laced pills had been found in the recent raid, but said medications had been seized to test whether they contained fentanyl.

Those results have yet to be released. 

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