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The Sinaloa Cartel (Spanish: Cártel de Sinaloa), also known as the CDS, the Guzmán-Zambada Organization, the Pacific Cartel, the Federation and the Blood Alliance, is a large, international organized crime syndicate that specializes in illegal drug trafficking and money laundering. It was established in Mexico during the late 1980s as one of a various number of subordinate “plazas" operating under a predecessor organization known as the Guadalajara Cartel. It is currently headed by Ismael Zambada García and is based in the city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, with operations in many world regions but primarily in the Mexican states of Sinaloa, Baja California, Durango, Sonora, and Chihuahua. It also has a notable presence in a number of other regions in Latin America, such as Colombia; as well as in cities across the U.S. The United States Intelligence Community generally considers the Sinaloa Cartel to be the largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world, making it perhaps even more influential and capable than Pablo Escobar’s infamous Medellín Cartel of Colombia was during its prime. It is also frequently referred to by other non-government based media sources as one of the most powerful and feared criminal organizations in the world and indisputably the most powerful in Mexico. During the leadership of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán and Ismael Zambada García, the multi-billion dollar international drug trafficking empire supposedly controlled at least 91% of the world's heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana trade, regularly exporting multi-ton shipments of narcotics to the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. The organization has also been known to utilize narcosubmarines, boats, ships, trains, helicopters, and cargo planes for their smuggling operations. The Drug Enforcement Administration considers them to be "the biggest, most powerful drug cartel of all time".According to the National Drug Intelligence Center and other sources, within the U.S. the Sinaloa Cartel is primarily involved in the distribution of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, fentanyl, cannabis and MDMA. It is currently the majority supplier of illicit fentanyl to North America, with most, if not all of the cartel's heroin now also being mixed with fentanyl or related chemical analogues to increase the heroin's “potency” in a more cost-effective manner. As of 2023, the Sinaloa Cartel is overall the most active drug cartel involved in smuggling illicit drugs into the United States and trafficking them throughout the country. As mentioned previously, the organization is currently heavily involved in the manufacture and distribution of fentanyl, much of which consists of making and selling counterfeit “M30” pills designed to look like pharmaceutical-grade oxycodone pills, but which evidently do not contain any real oxycodone. This has predictably resulted in a surge of accidental overdose deaths in the U.S. Additionally, the city of San Diego in Southern California has reportedly now become America's “epicenter for fentanyl trafficking” according to some federal officials, as reported by local news. The cartel has reportedly responded to this phenomenon of mass overdose deaths in the U.S. by making multicolored fentanyl pills (so as not to be confused with ‘real’ oxycodone pills which are typically blue) as well as multicolored fentanyl powder so that it isn't accidentally (or intentionally) mixed in with other white substances like cocaine, according to Business Insider and other sources who interviewed operatives from the cartel.As of 2023, the Sinaloa Cartel remains Mexico's second most dominant drug cartel. After the arrest of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán and his son Ovidio Guzmán López, the cartel is now headed by old-school leader Ismael Zambada García (aka El Mayo) and Guzmán's other sons, Jesús Alfredo Guzmán and Ivan Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar. Various sources alleged that internal conflicts for the cartel's total leadership had broken out between the Guzmán and Zambada factions of the organization, however newer sources as of November 2022 have claimed that these two sides of the cartel have recently reconciled their differences and are planning to work together to take on the Jalisco Cartel. Currently, the "Federation's" main rival is the second most powerful drug cartel in Mexico; the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, with most battles between the two groups occurring in the Mexican regions of Baja California, Zacatecas (now spilling over into Jalisco), Sonora, Chiapas and, as of recently, Colima, over territory for drug trafficking routes. The Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels have reportedly also moved their rivalry to at least five different departments in Colombia according to the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo.