How meth, I mean cristal, became Mexico’s drug of choice
Photo by K. Mennem - Mexico City
All are familiar with the ups and downs of methamphetamine use in the United States, and most are familiar that the majority is now made in Mexico and smuggled north for Americans to use. I won't go into the details of when the United States made ephedrine harder to buy and when it pushed production into Mexico and out of rural America, as it is well documented.
The current form of methamphetamine being sold in the United States is purer, stronger, and cheaper than ever.
But when did Mexicans start using it?
Mexico obviously has a well known history of smuggling product into the United States for Americans hungry for drugs. The drug of choice has evolved over the years, but started with prohibition liquor, cheap cigarettes, and smelly marijuana. As the years went on, heroin and cocaine were put into the mix. These were the money makers but were always supplemented with marijuana loads.
While some in border states still smoke the stinky and chunky Mexican marijuana, it has been lowered as a priority as it is readily available in a stronger form in the United States.
Photo by K. Mennem - Cancun
Marijuana is a cheap buy in a Mexican city, and many people under 50 still regularly smoke it. So the marijuana fields do exist, but they are mainly sold to Mexicans or used as decoy loads at the border. (Marijuana has the highest detection rate by far for drug dogs, so often a decoy load of cheap marijuana will be sent to occupy the Border Patrol.)
When the U.S. cracked down on local production of meth, Mexico saw a business opportunity. (The same with opioids and fentanyl, but that is a story for another day that most know.) From jungle labs to super labs, chemists learned how to separate d- and l-methamphetamine, the two active ingredients in most meth products.
The d-isomer produces the high, and the l-isomer affects the body (such as heart pounding but no actual energy or high). By removing l-isomers you have a pure high, which can fuel a person to sleep on only an hour a day or even go days without sleep.
This is done during the recent advancing of the P2P process, as ephedrine has mainly been phased out in North America.
While some junkies may use uppers and downers, meth (an upper like cocaine, caffeine and adderall) is in the opposite category of heroin, fentanyl, and opioids (downers).
Many Americans sought meth after being hooked on ritalin, adderall, coffee and weekend cocaine parties. It was simply cheaper and more effective. Doctors giving children stimulants for decades and those turning into adults chugging heavily caffeinated drinks (while still seeking out adderall and/or cocaine) became the perfect mix for a generation (or two) to dabble with meth.
But this isn't the case in Mexico.
Adderall is hard to come by in Mexico, ritalin is available but expensive, and cocaine is too expensive for most in Mexico. Yes it is common to see cocaine use in beach cities and big cities of Mexico, but the price is not much cheaper than in San Diego or South Texas.
Enter cheap meth, I mean cristal.
Meth is not a word used in Mexico. The crystal methamphetamine is known as cristal. Sometimes even calling it meth will cause an argument. A dose in Mexico to get high is usually under a 20 peso note (a little more than $1 USD). A bag to get high for a week straight is easily obtained for under 200 pesos (about $11 USD). Running with the right (by that I mean wrong) crowd it is then usually cheaper than that.
Cristal is in a very hard rock form, even though they sample with liquid versions for smuggling purposes. People in resort cities and places like Tijuana found themselves buying their usual weekend party drugs but ended up with more intense highs and bloody noses.
This was a clear sign that dealers who sell both cocaine and cristal were mixing the two. Crushing the hard rock to a fine powder and putting it with the cocaine to spread the product and make it more effective.
Cristal can be smoked in a pipe, melted to be injected, or snorted after crushing into powder. Pill forms are available, but typically only for sending to other countries.
Narco culture led to a generation wanting to do cocaine to appear cool. In recent years many just crushed up cristal and pretended it was cocaine. Crush it hard enough and no questions asked.
It only took a couple years before you found addicts on the streets of large Mexico cities, highly addicted to cristal. Addiction had not been this big an issue before with people simply smoking marijuana and doing expensive cocaine on a Saturday nights before.
Snortings led to smoking, smoking led to injecting, and injecting led to a new group of street addicts.
Not all users of cristal in Mexico are addicts. Many joke that it is the casual drug of the lower class. A working man may have had a few too many beers the night before but a dose of cheap cristal will get him through a day of work with ease.
As of Spring of 2023, many of the top musicians in Mexico make light of the drug in their popular music. Peso Pluma being one of many examples.
Rehabilitation centers have a bad wrap in Mexico and most report the majority of patients being addicted to cristal. Rehab centers have been known to punish youth and also be shot up by criminals who are looking for hiding addicts with debts.
With rehab not much of an option, production being pushed into Mexico, and pop culture glorifying drug use, the cheap cristal has been embraced in almost every city and generation of Mexico.
K. Mennem (on right) in Mexico City