The Mexican organized crime group accused of fueling America’s fentanyl crisis is now making the deadly drug in Africa, according to local and international law enforcement agencies. The Sinaloa cartel has chosen South Africa as a major operational base, they say, largely because of its strong trade links to China, which produces the chemicals used to make the synthetic opioid.

“At this stage, there isn’t a big market for fentanyl in Africa, so much of this drug that’s being made in underground labs on the continent is being smuggled into the United States, the biggest fentanyl market in the world,” said Lt. Gen. Godfrey Lebeya, chief of The Hawks, South Africa’s top police investigative unit.

Lebeya told The Epoch Times that South African “drug traffickers and gangs linked to the Sinaloa cartel” are testing local narcotics markets. “Fentanyl has definitely entered our trafficking conveyor belts; we know that because we’re arresting suspects who are in possession of it and they tell us, ‘We want to see if South Africans get a taste for fentanyl,’” he said. (More)