Where is all the fentanyl produced
Executive summary
Illicit fentanyl and its analogues are produced through a transnational chain: precursor chemicals and some finished product originate in China, large-scale clandestine manufacturing has shifted to Mexico where transnational criminal organizations run labs that supply the U.S. market, and other countries including India and even criminal labs in the Americas also contribute to the supply; domestic U.S. production exists but is not the dominant source for the U.S. epidemic [1] [2] [3] [4]. Recent reporting and research suggest China’s 2023 crackdowns on precursor suppliers may have disrupted supplies to Mexican producers and contributed to recent declines in overdose deaths, illustrating the global interdependence of production and trade in this market [5] [6].
1. The two-part manufacturing chain: precursors largely trace to China, large-scale synthesis to Mexico
Fentanyl’s illicit supply is best understood as a chain in which precursor chemicals and equipment — often produced and exported from China — are shipped to Mexico, where Mexican transnational criminal organizations have built sizable clandestine manufacturing operations that synthesize finished fentanyl and fentanyl analogues destined for the U.S. market [1] [7] [8]. U.S. government reporting and academic syntheses consistently identify Mexico as the most significant source of the finished illicit fentanyl affecting the United States in recent years, while companies in the People’s Republic of China remain the largest suppliers of precursor chemicals and manufacturing inputs [1] [9].
2. China’s role: precursors, online marketplaces, and policy responses
China has been described by U.S. officials and analysts as the primary global source of many precursor chemicals and online supply chains that enable illicit fentanyl manufacture, with Chinese chemical firms and e‑commerce channels central to earlier waves of supply; Beijing has since taken regulatory and enforcement steps that U.S. researchers argue disrupted flows in 2023 [9] [8] [5]. Scholarly reviews note that China’s large chemical industry and the dual‑use nature of many precursor compounds created vulnerabilities that traffickers exploited, and that China’s regulatory tightening — including controls on classes of substances and online platforms — has had measurable impacts on supply dynamics [4] [10].
3. Mexico’s laboratories: scale, cartels, and border trafficking
By the mid‑ and late‑2010s, Mexican criminal organizations such as the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel acquired the ability to manufacture fentanyl domestically, moving from importation of finished pills to producing powder and counterfeit pills in clandestine labs that then flow across the U.S. land border or through ports of entry under cartel control or influence [1] [2] [11]. U.S. threat assessments and policy analyses emphasize that Mexican‑based transnational criminal organizations are primary suppliers of illicit fentanyl into the U.S., and that trafficking exploits both ports of entry and clandestine smuggling routes [1] [11].
4. India and other emerging sources: diversification of supply
Scholarly analyses and market monitoring show India has emerged as an important source for certain finished fentanyl powders and precursors advertised online, reflecting the diversification of supplier networks beyond China and the ability of criminal buyers to source chemicals from multiple jurisdictions [4] [12]. Published research and open‑source monitoring have documented Indian suppliers in darknet and open marketplaces for various fentanyl analogues and intermediates, signaling that the global supply chain is multi‑sourced and adaptive [4].
5. Domestic production and third‑country labs: smaller but present
Illicit fentanyl synthesis has also been detected in clandestine labs in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, and other third countries, though most policy sources and studies mark these as less significant in aggregate than Mexico’s industrialized illicit production tied to precursor imports [3] [2]. The landscape is fluid: law‑enforcement seizures, intelligence reporting, and academic work all indicate evolving geographies of production, and public sources do not provide a definitive, single breakdown of global volumes by country [3] [2].
6. Politics, attribution, and the limits of public evidence
Attribution of “where fentanyl is produced” has become a geopolitical flashpoint, with U.S., Mexican, and Chinese actors sometimes emphasizing blame over cooperative problem‑solving; researchers caution that supply disruptions can reflect policy, enforcement, or market shifts and that public data (seizures, mortality, social‑media indicators) offer imperfect signals of total production volumes [7] [5]. Available reporting supports a core fact: precursors historically flowed from China while Mexico has been the predominant source of finished illicit fentanyl for the U.S. market, with India and other actors increasingly implicated, but definitive global production tallies are not published in the cited sources [1] [4] [8].