Drug Trade Demand in the U.S. Report

Introduction

Over the past decade, the U.S. – Mexican border has been rocked by a series of violent conflicts that has resulted in thousands of deaths, however, these incidents are not indicative of a war between the U.S. and Mexico, instead, it is a direct result of the ongoing drug war between cartels due to their desire to control the lucrative cross border drug market.

Cartels such as the Los Zetas, Sinaloa cartel and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) are fighting not only amongst themselves; they are also fighting the joint U.S.-Mexican effort to curtail the ongoing illegal drug trade within the region.

However, despite the best efforts of either government, an effective solution has not been forthcoming with the drug trade intensifying over the past 20 years into a multi-billion dollar industry that has adversely impacted Mexico’s border cities¹.

The end result is that an estimated 10 million people have died due to the conflict, with border cities such as Juarez experiencing daily reports of murders occurring on the streets as rival gangs vie for dominance. As expected in regions with extremely high crime rates, border towns which normally would be thriving tourist destinations have experienced a massive decline in the number of tourists.

Local businesses have shut down, border economies have stagnated, and more residents have become more complicit towards the illegal drug industry in order to survive.

It is in this situation that it must be asked: what is the Mexican government doing in order to combat the cartels in order to prevent the continued deterioration of the border towns and the deaths of thousands of people per year as a direct result of the fighting? As such, it is the assumption of this paper that so long as there continues to be a constant demand for illegal drugs in the U.S., there will always be a drug trade.

Issues in Intelligence Gathering

Based on the examination of Waxman, it was shown that one of the main methods that the Mexican government has employed in its fight against the cartels has been a systematic information gathering campaign with assistance from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)².

Through such efforts, a general outline has developed regarding the current status of the cartels, their rankings, the means by which they smuggle drugs into the U.S. and the various areas that they operate in.

However, while information gathering has been a boon towards limiting the shipment of drugs, the cartels have also attempted to curtail such attempts by systematically eliminating state witnesses, killing government officials in broad daylight and effectively instituting a culture of fear amongst members of the local population.

This has resulted in the creation of a general reluctance to relay information on the cartels to the government due to the potential for reprisal. It is based on this that the main problem when it comes to intelligence gathering in this case is the sheer amount of fear that the various cartels elicit from ordinary people.

U.S. Intelligence Collection

U.S. intelligence collection when it comes to preventing the expansion of the illegal drug is primarily isolated into two specific activities: interrogation of local drug dealers for information as well as information obtained via special plea deals with illegal Mexican immigrants.

First and foremost, it should be noted that drug trafficking operates through a network of individuals that usually ends with local drug dealers selling drugs on the street. These are the individuals that are most commonly arrested and prosecuted resulting in them becoming the most likely sources of information regarding the extent of drug trafficking within the area.

While the information they have is sparse, members of the DEA or FBI often offer special “deals” to these individuals wherein in exchange for a reduced sentence, they will provide information to the police resulting in the capture and arrest of individuals “high up the chain of command” so to speak³. This often results in another set of deals being offered resulting in even more captures and more information obtained.

Once released from prison, these former drug dealers also at times act as police informants in order to reduce the time they are on probation. Overall, this tactic by U.S. intelligence agencies has enabled the DEA and FBI to systematically dismantle local drug dealing networks and intercept shipments resulting in more arrests and a reduction in the amount of drugs that enter into the country.

The other method in which the U.S. has been able to obtain information locally has been through the capture and interrogation of various illegal Mexican immigrants in the country who are also connected to the drug trade. Many of the illegal Mexican immigrants within the country often have connections to cartels in Mexico since cartels often offer local residents illegal passage into the U.S. through a variety of routes⁴.

It is through such endeavors that immigrants often become indebted to the cartels and act as drug mules in order to ferry illegal drugs into various locations within the country.

By arresting and interrogating these individuals and offering them plea deals before deporting them to Mexico, the U.S. government in effect learns about the processes behind the transportation of illegal immigrants and drugs across the U.S. boarder which enables them to accurately pinpoint the breaches in border security and put effective countermeasures in place.

This method has yielded information related to the location of underground tunnels, drop-off points as well as an assortment of transportation routes that smugglers often use to bring drugs and people into the U.S.

Analysis of Successes

While both the U.S. and Mexican governments have had a series of successes when it comes to capturing drug shipments, systematically eliminating the leadership structure of the cartels and freezing bank assets, the fact remains that drug shipments into the U.S. continue to grow. For every cartel leader that they capture, one more always seems to take his place.

The war on drugs has not resulted in the destruction of the drug trade; rather, it has merely created a smarter breed of criminal. Evidence of this can be seen in the consolidation of warring factions into single cartels who are intent on surviving and thriving through cooperation instead of conflict.

Analyzing Mexico’s Drug Cartels

Presently, there are three cartels that dominate the cross border drug trade in Mexico, these cartels consist of: the Los Zetas, the Sinaloa cartel and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13). All three of cartels consist of an eclectic mix of former soldiers, criminals and a variety of civilians that joined the cartels in order to get themselves out of poverty.

The individual operations of the cartel are actually quite similar in that their hierarchy consists of enforcers, the main leadership, the drug traffickers and finally the distributors⁵.

While a vast majority of the profits of the operation is concentrated in the upper hierarchy of operations, many within the ranks of the cartel enjoy considerable shares of the inherent profits which convince even more people to join the organization. However, these profits are often built upon a system of systematic brutality where the individual cartels commit acts that include, but are not limited to:

1. Kidnapping
2. Extortion
3. Torture
4. Murder
5. Rape

Such activities are meant to create an image of fear which helps to prevent people from openly talking about the operations of the cartel and helps to reduce the amount of informants that they have to deal with. It is due to this that a vast majority of the means by which the cartels transport drugs into the U.S. is still unknown with millions of metric tons of illegal drugs often making it across the border and into the hands of local dealers.

The Mexican government’s response to the activities of the cartels resulted in one of the world’s largest anti-drug campaigns with government agencies given a considerable amount of leeway when it came to expediting the sentencing of individuals involved with any of the cartels.

However, the cartels responded with even more brutal attacks against the government itself with broad daylight killings of police officers, the kidnapping of government officials and public executions of civilians and rival gang members⁶.

Suffice it to say, the actions of the Mexican government resulted in an escalation of tensions and deaths rather than bringing about an effective solution to the illegal drug trafficking that was occurring within the country.

Supply and Demand

After everything that has been stated so far, it really all boils down to the concept of supply and demand. The fact is that so long there is a demand for illegal drugs, there will be a means by which it will be supplied.

García and González expound on this argument by explaining that the main “fuel”, so to speak, of the drug trade is the billions of dollars within the U.S. that flow into the pockets of the cartels. Without the rewards justifying the sheer amount of risk associated with the production and sale of drugs, it is likely that the drug trade would stop completely⁷.

Conclusion

Based on what has been presented in this paper, it can be stated that so long as there continues to be a constant demand for illegal drugs in the U.S., there will always be a drug trade. Evidence of this can be seen in the fact that despite the best efforts of the Mexican government or even the U.S. government, the illegal drug trade continues to operate unabated without an end in sight.

As such, no matter how many crackdowns or arrests the Mexican government attempts, there will always be more people to “step up” so to speak when it comes to supplying illegal drugs to “customers” in the U.S. due to the constant demand. merely attempting to stop the flow of drugs is like trying to place a band aid over a deep wound, while on the surface everything may seem fine, yet deep down everything is only getting worse as the problem goes unresolved.

While it can be stated that it is the responsibility of the Mexican government to handle such an issue and squash the various cartels, the problem is that no matter how many people are arrested or even if several cartels were destroyed, the fact remains that basic economics is at work in this instance wherein if there is a demand for a product a supplier will always rise up to meet it.

In the end, there really is no effective solution to addressing the current drug trade since there is no way to control human nature⁸.

Bibliography

“After 40-Year Drug War, Cartels Come North.” PRISM Magazine 19, no. 1 (2012): 19.

García, Victor, and Laura González. “Labor Migration, Drug Trafficking Organizations, And Drug Use: Major Challenges For Transnational Communities in Mexico.” Urban Anthropology & Studies Of Cultural Systems & World Economic Development 38, no. 2-4 (2009): 303-344

Gray, James P. “Drug Prohibition Is the Problem.” Tikkun 27, no. 3 (2012): 34- 71.

Lawson, Guy. “How the Cartels Work.” Rolling Stone no. 1087 (2009): 50.

Mercille, Julien. “Violent Narco-Cartels or US Hegemony? The political economy of the ‘war on drugs’ in Mexico.” Third World Quarterly 32, no. 9 (2011): 1637- 1653.

Waxman, Lionel. “Mexican drug cartels are subverting sovereignty of the Tohono O’odham Nation.” Inside Tucson Business 19, no. 7 (2009): 22.

Footnotes

¹ “After 40-Year Drug War, Cartels Come North.” PRISM Magazine 19, no. 1 (2012): 19.

² Waxman, Lionel. “Mexican drug cartels are subverting sovereignty of the Tohono O’odham Nation.” Inside Tucson Business 19, no. 7 (2009): 22.

³ Gray, James P. “Drug Prohibition Is the Problem.” Tikkun 27, no. 3 (2012 2012): 34-71.

⁴ Ibid

⁵ Lawson, Guy. “How the Cartels Work.” Rolling Stone no. 1087 (2009): 50.

⁶ Ibid

⁷ García, Victor, and Laura González. “Labor Migration, Drug Trafficking Organizations, And Drug Use: Major Challenges For Transnational Communities in Mexico.” Urban Anthropology & Studies Of Cultural Systems & World Economic Development 38, no. 2-4 (2009): 303-344

⁸ Mercille, Julien. “Violent Narco-Cartels or US Hegemony? The political economy of the ‘war on drugs’ in Mexico.” Third World Quarterly 32, no. 9 (2011): 1637-1653.