The Sinaloa cartel is believed to be Mexico’s main producer, partly because it has a reputation for being the world’s most multinational and sophisticated cartel. And some experts say that the seizure, along with increased seizures of meth, cocaine and marijuana at the Mexican border, suggests that Sinaloa is producing more than ever before, despite five years of increased Mexican and American efforts to defeat the Mexican cartels.

“Sinaloa has been hit hard in the past four to six months, but they are clearly operating at a volume they were not able to do 5 or 10 years ago,” said David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. With methamphetamine, he added: “There is really not much competition. They are probably the only ones with the organizational and logistical capacity to move this kind of product.”

United Nations figures suggest that the supply of meth in the United States has been growing, with seizures at the Mexican border increasing 87 percent in 2011. At the same time, demand in the United States has been falling. According to the 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the number of Americans 12 and older who said they had used methamphetamine in the past 12 months declined 46 percent from 2002 to 2010, to 954,000 from an estimated 1.8 million.

But just as Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers are increasingly focused on the market in Europe, experts said that the meth not sent to the United States might be heading to other parts of the world. Sinaloa’s tentacles have been found on nearly every continent.