In May 2019, a small counter narcotics unit
was rolling down a country road
in a rural part of Sinaloa,
which was the center of the global drug empire
created by El Chapo Guzmán.
They were overcome by a pretty powerful smell.
They were literally stopped in their tracks
and it's one of the things
that people on these counter-narcotics squads
are looking out, for smelling out for in this case.
So they got out of their vehicles
and through a clearing of trees, they found five cauldrons
that were being used to produce heroin
and they also found four jugs
of a chemical called acetic anhydride that was made
by a major multi-billion dollar American company.
And the product brand was J.T. Baker.
And that chemical is the only thing
other than the sap from opium flowers
that you need to manufacture heroin
and under international drug laws,
it's one of the most highly controlled
of these chemicals sold anywhere in the world, except Mexico.
The great tragedy for me in investigating this
was the idea that any American company
could be involved in that even if it's unknowing.
It really made us feel like we had to do everything we could
to expose this situation and make it public.
In the 1980s, there was a flood of cocaine production
from Latin America into the United States.
An epidemic of crack in New York is now out of control.
And there was a huge surge in the use of cocaine
and then crack cocaine.
Do you have no words to describe how bad it is?
I've seen young mothers with babies and strollers
and small toddlers at their skirt tail buying crack
in the neighborhood where I live.
Amidst sort of like a lot of concern
and even some hysteria in the United States
about the cocaine problem
the CIA and the Drug Enforcement Administration in the U.S.
made a rather embarrassing discovery
that about 95% of the chemicals
that were used to make cocaine in South America for the U.S.
all came from American chemical companies.
Behind closed doors at Senate offices on Capitol Hill
the Senate Intelligence Committee
began its investigation this morning
one of several committees that want to carry out hearings.
In Congress, there was a scandal
and there was a pretty swift reaction.
And so there were significant amendments to the drug laws
requiring chemical companies to take responsibility
for their sales overseas
and to make sure that from start to finish
the supply of drug making chemicals went to customers
who had a legitimate purpose to use them
and weren't diverted to the drug trade.
The U.S. aggressively pushed international drug laws
around the world
and virtually every country has adopted domestic
and international controls over these very same chemicals.
There's a list called the Red List
and that list contains the chemicals
that are of the most concern
and they are the most highly regulated.
At the very top, the chemical
that is of the most concern internationally
and has been since 2001, is a chemical called acetic anhydride
and it is the only critical essential chemical
that you need to make heroin
and that's why it's number one on the Red List
and it's number one, under international narcotics laws.
We were trying to figure out knowing that acetic anhydride
was absolutely necessary for making heroin
and it was strictly controlled
how the drug cartels were getting access to it.
Internationally, acetic anhydride is heavily regulated.
For 18 years, Mexico avoided stringent regulations.
You know, they said that it was too costly for companies,
it wasn't necessary.
In 2018, they tightened the regulations.
But even with those tighter regulations
we saw that sale of quantities
that should have been regulated, went, you know
fell through the cracks, went completely unnoticed.
Regions where a lot of poppies being grown
farmers have to resort to growing the plant
mainly because of poverty.
You know, they're not either able to sustain their families
with the usual corn or bean crops
or they actually sometimes get threatened
by cartel groups that require
that they grow them on their plots.
Mexico production of heroin waxes and wanes
but at its height, there is a huge demand
from the cartels for acetic anhydride
because that's really the only ingredient missing for them.
They have the farmers producing their poppy for them.
So they just need to get ahold of some jugs of the chemical
and then they're ready to go.
These chemical labs all over poppy producing regions,
some of them get seized by the government
and then the government snaps photos of them
sends them to the media,
the media puts them up on their websites
and with a simple Google search
you can see what these labs look like.
So I'm scouring Google, looking for chemical labs
and busts by the army and I see a bunch of them
and they normally have a lot of unmarked blue barrels
or unmarked bottles of chemicals.
But I came upon one photo where I actually saw
there was a label and the label read "JT Baker".
I went through more searches and I saw it in another photo
and JT Baker just kept popping up as one of the only labels
that you could actually see on the chemical
in these lab busts.
So we realized, okay, something's happening here.
So, JT Baker was a century old American brand
that had this really good worldwide reputation
for its purity and its purity and control of its production
was a huge part of its marketing to chemist at universities
to chemist in the pharmaceutical industry
who use it in R and D, research and development labs.
It had been bought, the brand, in August of 2010
by a company that became known as Avantor.
From discovery to delivery
scientists and research professionals worldwide
trust Avantor.
They really had a strong presence
in the lab chemical market worldwide
but especially in the Americas.
Their operation in Mexico was a significant player
for them in the industry.
So as we started looking into this JT Baker brand
we started discovering a lot of really extraordinary things.
Sellers and distributors in Mexico that we spoke to
told us that it was incredibly popular with the Narcos
and the reason it was so popular
was because for the same reason
that it was marketed for laboratories
was its purity and its reputation for purity.
We found that the company was selling it
in these rather extraordinary containers.
So there are 20 liter size containers
which is it's a pretty substantial black plastic container
to keep the sunlight out.
Avantor had said that this specific container
was the largest amount of chemical
you could get in a container designed
for a single operator to be able to still use handily.
Now, the Narcos absolutely loved these jugs.
They were perfect for the cottage industry nature production
of heroin in Mexico.
So, one thing we found once we sort of studied
the market in Mexico and studied Avantor
was that Avantor distributes in Mexico
through what are called channel partners
which are essentially distributors.
And by law, they're only supposed to sell acetic anhydride
to legitimate users.
I started going down the list of the channel partners
and I just picked one and went out to see them.
They were sort of on the outskirts of Mexico city
in a very industrial area.
I started talking to the sales manager
and he basically said,
"You can buy it as long as you can pay for it."
He didn't require any proof that I was a legitimate lab.
You know, you could easily just walk in and buy this stuff
quite cheaply actually, and take it to your heroin lab
and produce heroin with ease.
So that was pretty shocking to see.
In November 2019, I was in Mexico
reporting on the ground
and I went into this medical supply store
with a Mexican colleague
and we bought a one liter bottle,
glass bottle of JT Baker acetic anhydride.
And the seller volunteered to us
that he could easily get us an 18 liter jug.
With that one 18 liter jug that you can buy for about $300
you can make about a million dollars worth of heroin.
And we also found that these 18 liter jugs were being sold
on the biggest e-commerce platform in Latin America.
It's called Mercado Libre, it's huge in Mexico.
It's kind of a mix between Amazon and Alibaba
I guess you would say.
And it was on offer from several sellers online publicly
in Mercado Libre.
We weren't supposed to be able to buy it
unless we were legitimate buyers
but we didn't have any trouble getting it.
One thing we noticed on the Avantor products
that we were able to purchase is it said
"Made in Mexico" in Spanish right there.
And we were like,
well, that's interesting because Avantor has, you know
these plants outside of the U.S. basically
so how can they say 'Made in Mexico'?
And it turns out that somehow they are bringing
the chemicals, the ingredients and putting it into the jugs
in Mexico in a facility they have in Mexico.
And it's actually produced by a subsidiary in Mexico.
So it really is made in Mexico, at least under Mexican law.
So that basically allows Avantor
and conceivably other companies to produce this stuff
in Mexico which means they have to comply
with Mexican regulations.
Everything was done in Mexico
to create and sell this product.
The company was able to say that it did everything
perfectly legally under Mexican law
'cause Mexican law was the only thing that applied
'cause Mexico was kind of this island unto itself
in international drug laws for the heroin making chemical.
So they said of course, that they hadn't violated the law
that their sellers, the distributors and the retailers
that they sold to were responsible for who the end user was.
In 2014 alone, more than 47,000 people died
from drug overdoses, more than any single previous year
in American history.
In addition to cutting across
virtually every demographic in America
the heroin epidemic has cut across
virtually every region of the country.
No urban part of America has been more devastated
by opioids, and by heroin, than Philadelphia.
The city of Philadelphia has a large neighborhood
called Kensington.
It's an area that's become synonymous with drug use.
It's even earned the nickname "the Walmart of heroin".
The Drug Enforcement Administration
routinely buys from undercover buys and tests heroin
from across the United States to do chemical analysis
of where it's coming from to determine its strength
its potency, its purity.
And they also track the price because that gives them
again, a good idea of what's happening.
The heroin that they've bought in Philadelphia
which almost certainly came from Kensington
is the most potent purist heroin that they've found for sale
anywhere in the United States.
And the great irony of that is that Avantor
which sells JT Baker branded acetic anhydride
that was used to make heroin in Mexico
their headquarters is just 15 miles away
from the Kensington neighborhood.
The day that our story came out
Avantor, in consultation with its CEO
and its general counsel
decided immediately that they were going to pull the product
from across Mexico.
It was a pretty extraordinary move for them to make
and I think it was also quite telling
in terms of how concerned they were
with the evidence that we published about how their product,
and their company, was being used to fuel heroin production
for the United States.