Narcotics

  • Reports issued by the U.S. and Mexican governments describe many temporary successes—drug seizures, arrests of kingpins, and hectares of crops destroyed—but the more prevalent assessment is that the U.S. anti-narcotics program has been a long-term failure.
  • The ability to close down the Caribbean route for drug shipments did not reduce U.S. narcotic imports, but rather resulted in a route change through Central America and Mexico. Once Mexico became the dominant route for the movement of narcotics to the United States, two other developments were inevitable: Mexicans became more addicted to drug use, and Mexican cartels became the dominant national cartels controlling the shipments to the U.S.
  • Drug trafficking was not an important issue for Mexico before the 1970s. Mexico did not produce cocaine, and marijuana output was mostly sent north of the border. Consumption of these drugs in Mexico was not high. Mexico, consequently, had little incentive to cooperate with the United States in drug interdiction or crop destruction. The dominant view in Mexico was that the drug trafficking problem arose from the U.S. inability to control its domestic demand for heroin, cocaine, and marijuana; the dominant U.S. view was that the Mexican government failed to make effective efforts to control the supply of drugs. 
  • The history of Mexican-U.S interaction in combating drug trafficking has a repetitive pattern of the United States pushing Mexico to take action to destroy and interdict crops and Mexico reacting partially at times, and more fully on other occasions. The constants have been large sales of narcotics coming from Mexico into the United States and a significant flow of money accruing to the Mexican drug dealers, thus empowering cartels to evade the law.
  • Currently Mexico’s anti-drug policy has three major shortcomings:
    1. Consumption of hard drugs has increased over the years. The Mexican authorities could no longer argue that their young people were different from those in the United States in that they had not caught the affliction of drug addiction.
    2. The money offered by Mexico’s large drug marketing operators was much too tempting for generally low-paid police officials to resist and the alternative to joining with the drug dealers was often death. This has resulted in the widespread corruption of Mexico’s many police forces.
    3. Mexico is experiencing high levels of violence associated with drug dealing. The killings stem from drug cartel competition to control various parts of the U.S. market, but many innocent individuals, police, and military officials are caught up in the process.
  • Mexican authorities have complained to the U.S. government about the flow of arms from the United States into Mexico, thus far with little effect. The United States has never ratified the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials (CIFTA).
  • Mexican authorities have complained to the U.S. government about the flow of arms from the United States into Mexico, previously with little effect. At the Fifth Summit of the Americas President Obama announced his intention to seek ratification of the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials (CIFTA).