MEXICO CITY (AP) — Inspectors from the Mexican Navy have intercepted 11,520 bottles of tequila that were to be exported and actually contained nearly 10 tons of concentrated liquid methamphetamine, the agency said Monday.
The discovery was made on Sunday in the port of Manzanillo, on the Pacific coast, the Navy said. He added that the bottles contained about 19,000 pounds (8,640 kilograms) of methamphetamine.
Photographs of the seizure show a trained dog alerting inspectors to cardboard boxes filled with glass bottles containing a brown liquid similar to aged tequila. You couldn’t see the labels on the bottles.
Mexico is the only authentic tequila producer in the world. Although there have been no reported instances of these types of methamphetamine bottles reaching consumers, ingesting their contents would be extremely dangerous.
The Tequila Regulatory Council, a certification and trade group, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on whether this was the first time such a thing had happened.
Mexico has become a major producer of methamphetamine, and dealers with liquid methamphetamine are often stopped at the windshield washer fluid depot or in other containers inside their vehicles.
Usually, dealers who receive liquid methamphetamine take it to specialized facilities where the water is extracted and returned to its normal crystalline form.
