MEXICO CITY — Mexico has shuttered 23 pharmacies at Caribbean coast resorts, six months after a analysis report warned that drug shops in Mexico had been providing foreigners tablets they handed off as Oxycodone, Percocet and Adderall with out prescriptions, authorities mentioned Tuesday.

A four-day inspection raid focused drugstores in Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Tulum.

In March, the U.S. State Department issued a journey warning about gross sales of such tablets, and the apply seems to be widespread.

The Navy Department mentioned Tuesday that irregular gross sales had been discovered at 23 of the 55 drug shops inspected.

The Navy mentioned the pharmacies often supplied the tablets solely to vacationers, and the drugstores marketed such tablets, and even supplied house supply companies for them.

The Navy mentioned it discovered outdated drugs and a few for which there was no report of the provider, in addition to clean or unsigned prescription kinds.

In February, the University of California, Los Angeles introduced that researchers there had discovered that 68% of the 40 Mexican pharmacies visited in 4 northern Mexico cities bought Oxycodone, Xanax or Adderall, and that 27% of these pharmacies had been promoting faux tablets.

UCLA mentioned the examine, printed in January, discovered that “brick and mortar pharmacies in Northern Mexican tourist towns are selling counterfeit pills containing fentanyl, heroin, and methamphetamine. These pills are sold mainly to US tourists, and are often passed off as controlled substances such as Oxycodone, Percocet, and Adderall.”

“These counterfeit pills represent a serious overdose risk to buyers who think they are getting a known quantity of a weaker drug,” Chelsea Shover, assistant professor-in-residence of medication on the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, mentioned in February.

And the U.S. State Department journey warning in March mentioned the counterfeit tablets being bought at pharmacies in Mexico “may contain deadly doses of fentanyl.”

The Mexican Navy didn't verify that any fentanyl-laced tablets had been present in final week’s raid, however mentioned drugs had been seized to check whether or not they contained fentanyl.

Fentanyl is an artificial opioid way more highly effective than morphine, and it has been blamed for about 70,000 overdose deaths per 12 months within the United States. Mexican cartels produce it from precursor chemical smuggled in from China, after which usually press it into tablets designed to seem like different drugs.

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