Mexico's armed forces seize 7,200 bottles of liquid meth disguised as alcoholic beverages

Mexican authorities intercepted a large shipment of liquid methamphetamine disguised as 7,200 bottles of mezcal, a distilled alcoholic beverage, inside a shipping container on Wednesday. 

Mexico’s marines were working customs duty when they came across the shipment on a Liberian-flagged vessel at the Pacific coast port of Manzanillo in Colima. The ship was headed to Australia, according to shipping documents. 

Inside the container, the marines found 7,200 bottles of mezcal labeled with the brand Mezcal Social, in addition to being marked as “artisanal mezcal.”

The merchandise was examined by a chemical identification system and a canine binomial trained in drug detection. 

Samples were taken and sent to the Pharmacology and Toxicology Laboratory for analysis and were confirmed as "positive" for methamphetamine. The bottles were found to contain about 9.5 tons of liquid methamphetamine. 

During the current year, the Secretariat of the Navy has seized approximately 124,400 kilos of methamphetamine.

The agency claimed that the seizure of the shipment contributes to weakening the distribution of drugs by criminal groups operating in this region of the country, significantly affecting their financial and operational structure and contributing to the country's internal security.

This is not the first time that methamphetamine has been moved from the North American country to Australia.

In 2022, $5.9 million worth of crystal meth was found in a shipment of electrical transformers in Hong Kong. The shipment was bound for Australia from Mexico. 

Also in 2022, Hong Kong authorities found 2 tons of liquid meth in bottles labeled as coconut water that had arrived from Mexico. The seizure was the largest in Hong Kong’s history, estimated to be worth $140 million.