U.S. Anti-Drug Strategy Has Failed; Methamphetamine Trafficking Is on the Rise

In February 2025, Donald Trump designated the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) as foreign terrorist organizations, and in December of that year, he signed an executive order declaring fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction.

By January 2026, he boasted in a Fox News interview that his administration had “knocked out” the cartels.

However, a review of official data by MILENIO reveals a very different story regarding methamphetamines.

Seizure statistics from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) show that, despite these efforts, U.S. authorities have been unable to stem the trafficking of this drug.

In 2024—the final year of the Joe Biden administration—64.9 tons of methamphetamine were seized at border crossings with Mexico; in 2025, with Trump’s anti-drug apparatus in place for nearly the entire year, that figure rose to 78.9 tons—an increase of 21.6 percent.

In the first five months of 2026, cumulative seizures have already reached 27.7 tons; this trend contradicts the narrative of an offensive that is supposedly choking off the flow during his second year in office.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) itself notes in its *World Drug Report 2026* that Mexican cartels remain the primary suppliers of methamphetamine in North America.

Border seizures reflect that methamphetamine trafficking remains active, even after the designation of Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been equally direct: since its *2024 National Drug Threat Assessment*, it has asserted that virtually all methamphetamine sold in the country today is manufactured in Mexico. The 2025 edition confirms that the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels produce the drug in clandestine Mexican laboratories and that the purity of the seized stimulant reached a record high of nearly 97 percent in 2025.

From home-based labs to superlabs

The fact that the United States currently relies on Mexican methamphetamine isn’t a recent phenomenon. In fact, it stems from a decision made by the U.S. Congress itself two decades ago.

In 2005, Washington passed the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act, which imposed strict restrictions on the sale of pseudoephedrine—the chemical base used to manufacture the drug—in pharmacies and stores across the country.

The impact on small-scale, home-based production was immediate; according to historical DEA reports, 23,700 clandestine methamphetamine laboratories were dismantled within the United States in 2004. By 2023, that figure had plummeted to just 60, according to the DEA’s own 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment.

Mexican cartels met the demand using industrial-scale facilities—so-called “superlabs”—capable of producing hundreds of kilograms per month without relying on regulated pseudoephedrine, thanks to the P2P (phenyl-2-propanone) method, which utilizes less strictly controlled precursors.

The result, according to the DEA, is that Mexican methamphetamine is now purer and more potent than it was 20 years ago. In 2025, the average purity of samples seized and analyzed by the agency reached nearly 97 percent—an all-time high.

Official figures show that seizure levels remain high despite intensified crackdowns on the cartels.

Rhetoric clashes with record figures

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) frequently touts record-breaking seizures. Over a single weekend in June 2026, officers in Laredo intercepted more than $72.3 million worth of methamphetamine in two separate operations; one involved over three tons hidden in a tractor-trailer with a manifest declaring a shipment of polypropylene.

Days earlier, at the same port of entry, another shipment resulted in the seizure of $10.1 million worth of the drug.

In a statement issued in May, CBP acknowledged that methamphetamine seizures rose by 63 percent in April 2026 compared to the previous month, and that the total volume of the drug seized so far in the fiscal year (which runs from October to September) is 61 percent higher than the amount seized during the same period in 2024.

The agency presents this as evidence of its effectiveness; however, viewed from another perspective, it also points to a market moving increasingly large volumes through the very border crossings Trump vowed to shut down.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reached a similar conclusion in its *World Drug Report 2026*, released last month. The agency warns that methamphetamine manufactured in the region is no longer destined solely for the United States; instead of pulling back, it is crossing the Pacific Ocean to reach new markets on the other side of the world.

In a May statement, CBP itself acknowledged that methamphetamine seizures rose 63 percent in April 2026 compared to the previous month, and that the total volume of drugs seized so far in the fiscal year (which runs from October to September) is 61 percent higher than the amount seized during the same period in 2024.

The agency presents this as proof of its effectiveness; however, viewed differently, it also describes a market that continues to move increasing volumes through the very border crossings Trump vowed to shut down.

Official CBP figures show a more than 21 percent increase in seizures compared to the final year of the Biden administration.

Trials Fail to Stop the Cartels

And the U.S. justice system has certainly dealt blows to major figures. In February 2026, the San Diego U.S. Attorney’s Office charged René Arzate García—known as “La Rana” and a regional boss for the Sinaloa Cartel in Tijuana—with narco-terrorism for trafficking fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine. In April, a New York grand jury indicted Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha Moya and nine other state officials for allegedly protecting the cartel’s shipments of methamphetamine, fentanyl, cocaine, and heroin in exchange for millions of dollars.

Rocha Moya denied the charges, calling them a “perverse strategy” to violate the constitutional order.

President Claudia Sheinbaum, for her part, questioned the legitimacy of the indictments, stating that—given the lack of clear evidence—the move appeared to be politically motivated.

In North Carolina, a local operative linked to the CJNG was sentenced in June to more than 21 years in prison for distributing methamphetamine, fentanyl, and heroin. A month earlier, another Sinaloa Cartel figure received a 28-year sentence for the same offenses.

The US Shifts Focus Away from Methamphetamines

In its annual review, the DEA highlights nearly 1,300 arrests made in August and September 2025 alone targeting the two organizations dominating the fentanyl market, alongside the extradition of dozens of fugitives, including Rafael Caro Quintero.

It appears that efforts have been concentrated almost entirely on fentanyl, with few of these enforcement actions aimed at reversing the trend of methamphetamine seizures.

The UNODC itself confirms this in the regional chapter of its 2026 World Drug Report: in North America, it states, “the methamphetamine market has stabilized at high levels,” and the majority of the drug manufactured in the region remains there for local consumption—specifically in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

The report adds that treatment for methamphetamine use has risen sharply in North America over the last decade, and “more recently in Mexico.” Neither terrorism designations nor operations targeting cartel kingpins have succeeded in dislodging Mexican-made methamphetamine from its entrenched position in the US market.

Ian Vásquez of the Cato Institute summarized the situation following the February death of CJNG leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes—known as “El Mencho”—during a military operation in Jalisco that the White House hailed as a victory.

Official data contradict the narrative that the trafficking of this drug across the Mexican border is under control.

Over the years, Vásquez noted, there has been no sustained reduction in the flow of drugs into the United States, as there will always be an economic incentive for another group to step in and fill the void left by a captured or killed leader.

Source: Milenio