NYT: "Mexican Cartels Lure Chemistry Students to Make Fentanyl"

Via the New York Times, this story: 

American law enforcement officials also said that many young chemists had been swept up in arrests at Mexican fentanyl labs in recent years. The arrested chemists told the authorities that they had been working on developing precursors and making the drug stronger, according to the officials.

A chemistry professor at a university in Sinaloa State said he knew that some students enrolled in chemistry classes just to become more familiar with skills needed to cook synthetic drugs. The professor, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, said he had identified students who fit that profile by their questions and reactions during his lectures.

“Sometimes when I am teaching them synthesis of pharmaceutical drugs, they openly ask me, ‘Hey, professor, when are you teaching us how to synthesize cocaine and other things?’” he said.

...But as the cartels gain greater control of the fentanyl supply chain, U.S. officials say, it will become more difficult for law enforcement in both countries to stop the industrialized production of synthetic opioids in Mexico.

The cartels “know we are now focused on the illicit trafficking of these precursor chemicals around the world,” said Todd Robinson, the State Department’s assistant secretary of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

Those efforts are driving the cartels “to try to bring this thing in-house,” Mr. Robinson said. “The practical result of that is their ability to more easily and quickly transfer those drugs to the United States.”

That the cartel is hiring chemists and chemistry students isn't news, I suppose, but I do think it is interesting that they are attempting to recruit undergraduate students for this work (especially the practical and economic manufacture of fentanyl precursors.) The cartel seems to have a fairly sophisticated ability to perform chemical manufacturing in Mexico*, so it seems to me that they would not be so naive as to be hiring brand new students into such economically important work for them. My gut feeling tells me that the cartels are consulting more experienced chemists. 

*I can't find the link to the evidence that they've been using catalytic techniques to epimerize their discarded D-methylamphetamine to a mixture that can be re-resolved to the tartrate salt.