A War that Can’t Be Won: Binational Perspectives on the War on Drugs

11. The U.S. Causes but Cannot (or Will Not) Solve Mexico’s Drug Problems

285 Introduction Most of the world’s illegal drugs are exported across international boundaries . It is common to ask how interventions in source and/or transit countries affect drug use and drug-related problems downstream, but one can also ask how drug policies in final market countries affect problems upstream in source and transit countries. Here we investigate whether changes in U.S. policies—notably their heavy reliance on incarceration—might strengthen Mexico’s ability to deal with drug problems. Mexican Americans imprisoned in the United States for drug violations in 2004 look very much like their fellow citizens of other ancestries. Foreign nationals in U.S. prisons, in contrast, were typically involved with much greater quantities of drugs, although they were not more likely to report being in large organizations or having weapons involvement. Since they represent less than 10 percent of all drug law violators in prison, it would be possible to change incarceration rates for foreign nationals without making a dramatic change in overall U.S. incarceration policy. However, that would not alter the fundamentals. The United States and Mexico are and would remain linked through international drug trafficking , with U.S. demand supporting large-scale trafficking through Mexico. The only U.S. policy reform that would rapidly ameliorate traffickingrelated problems in Mexico is legalization (not just decriminalization) of all drugs (not just marijuana). That is a political nonstarter in the United States, and not only because U.S. leaders are obdurate; from the U.S. chapter eleven The U.S. Causes but Cannot (or Will Not) Solve Mexico’s Drug Problems Jonathan P. Caulkins and Eric L. Sevigny 286 · Ending the War perspective, across-the-board legalization is at best risky and likely contrary to its interests. U.S. and Mexican interests in this regard are not aligned. Since any politically viable change in U.S. policy would not make a decisive difference for Mexican drug problems in the short term—or even medium term, Mexico must deal with its present crisis primarily through domestic actions; it should not wait for a solution in the form of changes in U.S. policy. Mexico’s Role in U.S. Drug Market Supply Much of the U.S. demand for illegal drugs is supplied through Mexico. Cocaine (including crack) is by far the most important drug market in the United States. It accounts for about 60 percent of both black market revenues and drug-related social costs (Caulkins, Pacula, Paddock, and Chiesa 2002; Office of National Drug Control Policy 2004). Mexico has nothing directly to do with cocaine production, which occurs almost entirely in South America (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2009). However , for the last twenty years, Mexico has been the primary transit country . Heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana represent the second tier of illegal drug markets in the United States. All have black markets of roughly comparable value. Each individually is only about one-sixth as important in the United States as cocaine/crack, but all three are much more important than whatever substance is ranked fifth. Indeed, all other illegal drugs combined are of almost no consequence when analyzing U.S.–Mexican drug market connections.1 These are broad generalizations. Marijuana differs importantly from heroin and methamphetamine by being relatively inexpensive. Not coincidentally, it is also the most widely used and is not importantly linked to nondrug crime or violence in the United States. Nevertheless, in very round terms one can think of U.S. drug markets as being two-thirds cocaine (including crack) and one-third heroin, methamphetamine , and marijuana combined. From Mexico’s perspective, heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana collectively are more than one-third of the problem because they are all produced in Mexico, whereas Mexico is only a transit country for cocaine. And marijuana looms relatively larger because its prices are marked up less within the United States. Hence, a larger proportion of users’ spending on marijuana makes it back to producers than is the case with the other drugs. How much more problematic is unclear, because we lack good data describing how the revenues of Mexican drug trafficking orga- The U.S. Causes but Cannot Solve Mexico’s Drug Problems · 287 nizations (DTOs) are distributed across drug markets2 (Office of National Drug Control Policy 2001, 2003; Drug Availability Steering Committee 2002). Kilmer, Caulkins, Liccardo Pacula, MacCoun, and Reuter (2010) attempted to pull together the incomplete and not always...