Mexican Cartels Produce Cloned Drugs Laced with Methamphetamine: DEA

U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi and the acting head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Robert Murphy, held a press conference on July 15, 2025, to announce the measures the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is taking to combat drug cartels and trafficking under the “Operation Take Back America” initiative.

At the press conference—held at DEA headquarters in Springfield, Fairfax County, Virginia—Bondi and Murphy revealed that Mexican drug cartels were manufacturing pills that mimic drugs and laced with methamphetamine, as a new way to generate addiction among young people in the United States. Furthermore, the U.S. Attorney General indicated that although fentanyl remained the leading cause of overdose deaths in the United States, the DEA had seized more than 29 tons of methamphetamine so far in 2025, reaching the level for all of 2024.

“Something else I hadn’t seen is that they’re now putting methamphetamine into pills. This is the first time we’ve seen it in pills. Now, a methamphetamine pill may not kill you instantly, but it can get you so addicted that it can destroy you,” Bondi said.