The Last Harvest? From the US Fentanyl Boom to the Mexican Opium Crisis

For decades, farmers in Mexico’s most marginalized regions depended on illicit opium poppy cultivation for the US heroin market. The fentanyl boom collapsed demand for Mexican heroin, crashing prices from ~20,000 pesos/kilo in 2017 to 6,000-8,000 pesos. Draws on fieldwork in two poppy-producing regions (Nayarit and Guerrero) and concludes by evaluating possible solutions including crop substitution and opium legalization for medicinal use.