Friday night, end of a week with work, pressures, transit. Sharing a time of recreation is normal in young people. Meetings with talk, music, dance, food and drink … But tension grows … new experiences are needed, an ideal occasion to experiment with something that can be fatal. Thus you can initiate the experience of entering the controversial and delicate issue of drug use. A test or experiment, in principle harmless, leads to entering a delicate world, which can lead to dependence, pain and even death, mainly among young people.
The products that are offered in the Guatemalan market are varied. In recent years, this consumption generates a supply and demand process based on the cost of the drug acquired. In order to facilitate this consumption, producers combine chemicals to produce similar effects and, in theory, at a lower cost. The mixture of cocaine and fentanyl is the one that records the greatest consumption in our country. According to statistics from the Executive Secretariat of the Commission Against Addictions and Illicit Drug Trafficking (SECCATID), in Guatemala, during 2024, this combination registered 40.76% of the total consumption at national scale.
Fentanyl, illegally processed, is marketed in the national market in liquid or dust; Hence its ease to be mixed with other substances. While consumption begins with cocaine, fentanyl is used as an alternative, which in principle is cheaper both in production and distribution and acquisition, although its components represent greater danger to the person who uses it.
In accordance with the statistics of the Secretariat Observatory, not all the people who used a combination of drugs such as the one that is pointed out sought help in the first semester of 2024. The cases served that recognize the combined consumption of cocaine and fentanyl were between 1.10% and 1.70%. SECCATID has a unit that deals with people who acquire a consumption dependence, to help them overcome it.
Meanwhile, in September 2024, Seccatid reported that 68.66% of people who requested support made it due to the consumption of the mixture of both drugs. According to the same statistics of the section, the second largest report of substance consumption is marijuana – and, in 2024, February and April were the months in which it was most consumed. The study concludes that the presence of other substances such as cocaine, inhaling and tranquilizers without prescription points to consumption diversification, especially in urban environments. Product presentations are varied, but it is the acquisition in tablet that reports more cases.
Attractive packaging
The drug markets have evolved and the presentation of their products is increasingly attractive. In more developed markets, such as the United States and Europe, ecstasy is used for mixtures or other combinations that distributors design. By having a lower cost and a similar effect, fentanyl becomes a more profitable product for producers. However, the chemical alteration of the drug entails health risk.
The data handled by the Ambulatory Treatment Center of the Sectcatid realizes that in 2024 six thousand 84 people were attended by addiction. In these cases, those affected reported a more traditional combination, such as alcohol, tobacco and marijuana. The issue becomes more delicate when, according to the section, drug use has come for sale in educational establishments. Gangs offer these drugs to students and also force them to sell them to their own classmates.
According to the National Civil Police (PNC), this year 200 agents were appointed to the Safe School Program. The presence of gangs in schools was mainly identified in educational schools in zones 24, 21, 18 and 6, in addition to Mixco and Chimaltenango. In addition, the records of the Public Ministry by 2024 indicated that 50.85% of the seized drug was marijuana; 21.02%, cocaine, and crack, 0.51%.
Methamphetamine records 0.17%, while 27.45% of seizures correspond to substances that are about to be determined. The MP argues that the department that registered the most incidence was Guatemala, followed by Quetzaltenango and Suchitepéquez, and where they were less seized was in Totonicapán, Jalapa and El Progreso. In Guatemala City, the area with more seizures executed was 1, and of these, 16.05% was marijuana.
Market changes
As it works with many products, the drug market is dynamic and changing, both for global and local aspects. In accordance with the Changes in the Illicit Drug Market, prepared by the National Economic Research Center (one hundred), after the Covid-19 Pandemia, the drug market recorded a collapse in Colombia, which opened the way to the illicit trade of the fentanyl.
For drug producers, the combination of cocaine with fentanyl reduces costs and increases profits, but this product is more harmful to consumer health. With the argument that a better sensation is generated between who consumes this drug, the market increased the offer with serious consequences for consumers. Guatemala faces a scenario in which both traditional and emerging narcotics live together, which requires constant surveillance to identify new dynamics and risks, especially among adolescents and young people, who are the most vulnerable population.
For Walter Menchú, a hundred researcher, one of the aspects that influences consumption in recent years is due to drug availability. Several retailers have approached the educational centers, give the first samples for students to acquire addiction. Already when more of the product is needed, the costs rise. The clinical psychologist Cindy Rivera delves into the individual and social problem that this consumption represents. He estimates that addictions are a health problem and put the emotional health of societies at risk.
He adds that fun for many young people has turned to drug use. “We cannot even speak only of Guatemala; it is something already globally. Young people, usually, are involved in an initial consumption in adolescence; I would say that there is already a very high percentage that gives way to drug use long before,” he says. From the perspective of the sociologist and university professor Adrián Fernández, the social problem that causes these addictions is the urgent need to achieve money to acquire them, which affects an increase in assaults and violence.
In the long term, it implies health problems that the State must most likely assume costs, both to treat addictions and the consequences of consumption, in the mental and physicist. Easy access to narcotics, the decrease in costs with the risk of greater damage to health, the diversification of markets and places of distribution, the social factors that generate tension and need for relief to that sensation, the social pressure of friends and colleagues … everything becomes a breeding ground that facilitates access to a world as dark as harmful and dangerous, which can imply addiction, dangers, health problems and even death.
The complicated world of drug use grows and hooks more and more to Guatemalan youth.