Posted on 12/22/2004 8:35:21 AM PST by AreaMan
By Jim Kouri
MichNews.com
Dec 21, 2004
In the United States-Mexico experience, there are relevant lessons for countries engaged in cooperative counter narcotics efforts. The primary lesson learned is that the illegal drug market has metastasized at the cost of thousands of lost lives and billions of dollars. A second lesson is that bilateral and multilateral efforts are key in the crusade against drugs.
The costs that the illegal drug trade imposes on the United States have been estimated at a staggering $70 billion each year. Mexican drug traffickers are the primary transporters of the major narcotics imported into the US The 2,000 mile shared border between Mexico and the US is the entry point for a large percentage of these drugs. During FY 2000, 89 million automobiles, 4.5 million trucks, and 293 million people entered the US from Mexico. Each of these modes of transportation have been used by drug traffickers to ship their goods across the border. For example, a tractor-trailer transporting legitimate cargo may also contain hidden bales of marijuana; a legal immigrant might carry concealed parcels of heroin through a border checkpoint; or a passenger car may contain bags of cocaine in a tire or other secret compartments. In addition, traffickers have smuggled drugs into the US on aircraft, high-speed "go-fast" boats, and cargo ships. Whatever the method, traffickers have employed numerous and diverse methods to avoid detection of transported drugs.
Mexican traffickers have been successful in their efforts. Joseph Keefe of the Drug Enforcement Administration, one of the principal drug enforcement agencies in the US, reported that approximately half of the cocaine available in the US enters the country along the US-Mexico border. Keefe also noted that the majority of marijuana and a significant portion of heroin consumed in the US emanates from Mexico. Additionally, he indicated that Mexican drug organizations have established methamphetamine laboratories that have been estimated to produce 85 percent of the methamphetamine available in the US Overall, Mexican drug traffickers have become a significant supply source for most of the major drugs consumed in the United States.
In the past, drug organizations in Mexico were predominately involved in cultivating marijuana and opium – a precursor to heroin and other opiates. Over the past decade, however, Mexican drug organizations secured a prominent position in the cocaine market that was formerly dominated by Colombian drug cartels, and opened the doors for Mexican groups to dominate the drug trafficking market. In the late 1980s, Mexican traffickers were middlemen for the Colombian cartels. Traffickers would receive shipments of cocaine in northern Mexico, smuggle the drugs across the border, and leave stashes in specified locations where Colombian distributors would retrieve the cocaine and transport it to destinations across the US In 1989, traffickers who were annoyed at delinquent service payments from Colombian suppliers retained shipments of cocaine in extortion until payments were made.
During the same year, in a stroke of good fortune for US law enforcement, a massive stockpile of these shipments amounting to over forty-thousand pounds of cocaine was discovered in an industrial warehouse in the vicinity of Los Angeles, California. This pivotal event forced the hand of the Colombian drug barons and led to a business arrangement that presently gives the Mexican traffickers as much as half of all the cocaine that they transport.
The shifting role of Mexican drug trafficking groups in the US from subcontracted transporters of cocaine to urban-based distributors occurred somewhat rapidly in the early 1990s. Prior to this transformation, the distribution of drugs in the US resembled a cottage industry, with loosely organized "mom and pop" distribution franchises in urban enclaves with large Mexican populations from Los Angeles to Chicago. When the Colombian cartels were toppled after significant law enforcement efforts in 1995 and 1996, the void was soon filled by Mexican traffickers who were eager to capitalize on the potential drug profits. Within a few short years, Mexican traffickers emerged as the primary couriers of cocaine for the robust US drug market.
Additionally, Mexican drug organizations have infiltrated the expanding methamphetamine market. A DEA report noted that narcotics groups from Mexico now dominate this market in the US, which formerly was run exclusively by American based gangs and illicit trafficking groups. Methamphetamine, unlike other drugs distributed by Mexican traffickers, is produced in simple laboratories with readily-available precursor chemicals. Mexican drug organizations, the DEA report continues, have established labs throughout Mexico and California, in addition to super-labs that are able to produce hundreds of pounds of methamphetamine in a week. Furthermore, the report revealed, "it is now not uncommon to find hundreds of major methamphetamine traffickers from Mexico . . . established in Boise, Des Moines, and Omaha, and other cities in America's heartland, where there has been an explosion of methamphetamine use."
Characteristics of Mexican Drug Trafficking Groups
Mexican traffickers carry out their craft with proven ability and professionalism. The most prominent trafficking organizations control the drug trade across broad tracts of northern Mexico surrounding Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, and along the northeastern Gulf. These Mexico-based trafficking groups include the Juarez cartel, the Arellano-Felix Brothers organization, the Caro-Quintero organization, and the Amezcua-Contreras organization. A major trafficking group might contain 200 or more members in the Mexico base, with hundreds of additional members throughout the organization's network. Although these groups operate independently, they have created a loose partnership called the Federation, in order to establish a greater degree of security and profitability. A recent estimate suggests the annual income accrued by these organizations is in the tens of billions of dollars. In comparison, the entire country of Mexico had an estimated nominal GDP of $557 billion last year.
Clearly, there are huge financial incentives for drug organizations in Mexico to protect and maintain their trade. As a consequence, they have been successful at corrupting or killing some of the law enforcement officers and public officials who might otherwise have impeded their operations. Under this canopy, trafficking groups have developed a well-structured network of organizations that exhibits centralized decision processes, secure command and control centers, compartmentalization, and integrated work roles. The impenetrability of these organizations by law enforcement is clear – while the drug lords have been identified and are known to virtually all of the major law enforcement departments throughout the US, they continue to avoid arrest and extradition.
With a well-established base in Mexico, drug organizations have expanded their operations in the US Traditionally, traffickers operated primarily along the West Coast. However, they have now penetrated major cities on both coasts and in the Midwest. Traffickers typically transport drug shipments to various urban venues across the US and turn the shipments over to entrenched Dominican and Colombian distribution networks. These bulk transactions often elude the surveillance of law enforcement officers, as transfers are carefully choreographed to avoid detection. Exchanges might take several days, and may be as uncomplicated as the switching of drivers between two vehicles – one containing drugs and the other containing money. To remain discrete, traffickers often blend into an ethnic community and disguise themselves against the backdrop of day-to-day urban commerce.
In the interest of advancing their business, traffickers will frequently establish partnerships with legitimate cargo transporters and conceal their drugs amidst legal goods. Traffickers also utilize advanced technologies in their operations – often receiving encrypted messages from their superiors via fax, phone, computer, or pager. Mexican traffickers employ professionals such as lawyers and accountants in their illicit operations, and rank high in terms of their overall professionalism in comparison to other organized crime groups in the US
While other organized crime groups based in the United States are involved in a variety of illicit activities, Mexican trafficking organizations work almost exclusively in the drug market. They are not diversified in terms of other illegal trades, and any other activities that they engage in are primarily to further the business of trafficking. A recent survey of transnational organized crime in the US for the United Nations focused on the characteristics and operations of several groups – La Cosa Nostra, Russians, Asian gangs, and Mexican drug organizations. Of these groups, only the Mexican drug organizations are restricted to a principle trade. The other groups' activities are opportunity-driven. In other words, they engage in whatever opportune illicit venture exists at a given time and place. For example, the Wah Ching – an Asian organized crime ring based in California – have been linked to a plethora of illicit activities including counterfeiting, forgery, bank fraud, insurance scams, money laundering, armed robbery, home invasions, vehicle theft and trafficking, trafficking in women, prostitution, drug trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, and software piracy, to name a few. The Mexican organized crime groups, on the other hand, concentrate their energies on drug trafficking and large scale drug distribution within the United States.
Mexican traffickers traditionally operate more discretely in the United States than in Mexico, as acts of violence draw undue attention to their activities. In the US, trafficking groups exist in the shadows and tend not to show rivalrous displays of territoriality or intragroup violence as they do in Mexico. Rather, Mexican drug traffickers in the US have been found to collaborate with what otherwise might be rival groups, including Colombian and Dominican drug traffickers, La Cosa Nostra, and other criminal organizations. In some instances, these groups have helped Mexican drug traffickers also infiltrate the legitimate economy of the US Major hub cities for trafficking groups include Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, and Houston. With penetration into the Canadian drug market as well, Mexican traffickers have established a presence throughout much of North America.
Sources: US Drug Enforcement Administration National Security Institute US Department of State National Association of Chiefs of Police
---- Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police. He's former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed "Crack City" by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. He's also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country. He writes for many police and crime magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer, Campus Law Enforcement Journal, and others. He's appeared as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, Fox News, etc. His book Assume The Position is available at Amazon.Com, Booksamillion.com, and can be ordered at local bookstores.
This was the same story for as long as he worked on the line.
Nothing seems to have changed, except the media coverage.
War against drugs = war against capitalism = war against human nature.
Maybe that's why we have been so unsuccessful?
Maybe.
I think it's really more simple and basic than that. It's about Mexico's relative poverty, corruption and unwillingness of the moneyed to share more pesos.
It's also about OUR willingness to keep the status quo for their cheap labor.
Follow the dinero.
Supply and demand.
Our society decided, back in the 60's, that drugs of whatever kind were wonderful. They still stayed against the law, but also during the 60's, our society decided that "bad laws were made to be broken," a.k.a. relative morality.
Mexico supplies our demands. The Mafia, apparently, can't keep up with the competition, OR, uses the Mexicans because of their cheaper prices/labor too.
Hard to contain.
They're only trafficking the drugs Americans refuse to traffic.
(Sorry,someone was bound to say it)
I guess you were trying to be concise but I don't really equate drug dealiing with capitalism.
So maybe another capitalist group puts together a fund to provide a private security firm/bounty hunter incentive, eh? We invoice the gummit for outsourced services, we put all the seized weapons and vehicles up for public auction, make a new countering Capitalistic force! And the hospitals and their insurers would probably help us a bit, since we will decrease their emergency costs.....I'll put up the first few bucks, anybody wanna join me?
Yep, if our gov't fails in the WOT as it has on our 35 yr. WOD.......this country is in very deep doo-doo.
Hey, there ya go a market based solution to the drug problem.
I believe there are many who would join you. The problem is the "bought" politicians at the top. Years ago a group of us proposed:
A letter of marque and reprisal was an official warrant or commission from a national government authorizing the designated agent to search, seize, or destroy specified assets or personnel belonging to a party which had committed some offense under the laws of nations against the assets or citizens of the issuing nation, and was usually used to authorize private parties to raid and capture merchant shipping of an enemy nation.
Answer was not only no, but you'll be arrested if you try this.
Terrorists support their operations with the illicit drug trade. Terrorism is the leading growth industry in the world. If the exorbitant profits in the drug trade was not continued by protecting the drug lords through prohibition, terrorism would lose its financial means to expand.
I see, so legalizing drugs will end the profits of drug cartels?
Price supports seem to prop up every other business, I don't know why it doesn't affect drugs the same. I haven't heard of any drug user complaining because he can't find drugs, the cost is the main concern.
With all due respect, I disagree, at least for this country. I am old. I remember the years of the new mantra: bad laws were made to broken. BEFORE that, there WAS some respect for the law, police, authority. I remember the "pig" screams at police. I remember the flag burning and the new TOTAL disrespect for law.
Law and moralty are not the same thing. In most cases, they ought to be. Right IS right and wrong IS wrong. Laws ought to GENERALLY follow our morality.
Relative morality is lawyer law.
Generally, not always, laws are legislated morality. You just have decide who's morality will be legislated into law.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.