Mexico City (ANTARA News/AFP) - Soldiers seized a synthetic drugs laboratory and a warehouse containing a cache of chemicals, Mexican officials said Thursday, in the latest evidence of an alarming new front in the country`s spiraling war on illicit drugs.

Officials said the lab in the western town of Tequila, containing a metric tonne of crystal meth and more than two tonnes of chemical substances, was the 25th to be dismantled this year alone in Jalisco state.

Security forces also found a warehouse containing one ton of chemical substances in the greater urban area of state capital Guadalajara, the defense ministry said in its statement Thursday.

Some 50,000 Mexican security forces have been deployed nationwide under a government clampdown on drug gangs which was launched in 2006 and has been accompanied by a spike in violence.

Drug consumption is moving away from cocaine and opiates and increasingly towards synthetic drugs, according to the 2010 UN World Drug Report.

The global number of users of amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) -- between 30 and 40 million -- was soon expected to top the combined number of opiate and cocaine users, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) warned last November.

Cannabis remained the most widely produced and consumed drug. (*)

Editor: Kunto Wibisono
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