Drug War in Mexico

The Drug War in Mexico

Tuesday, 15 March 2011 10:18 David A. Shirk, US Council on Foreign Relations

Since the 1970s, the cross-border trade in drugs and guns has brought both immense profits and terrible destruction to the United States and Mexico. Some estimates place the annual profits of Mexico’s drug trade at 3 percent to 4 percent of the country’s GDP—on the order of $30 billion per year—and around half a million people are said to earn a substantial portion of their income through the narcotics business. The business, however, is not without its risks and costs. Since Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, effectively declared war on the drug cartels in 2006, more than 30,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico. Nor is the United States immune from the effects of the drug trade. The ruthlessness of drug trafficking organizations is well-known in this country already, particularly, though not exclusively, in the inner cities, and the violence of Mexico’s drug war is now beginning to spill over the border. Border patrols are already costing the country more than $3 billion per year while obstructing billions more in legitimate trade. Yet the United States is hardly an innocent victim. Nearly half of adult Americans admit to having tried drugs in the past, and the United States remains the world’s largest consumer of illegal drugs. It is also the world’s largest supplier of weapons, which fuel the drug war in a more direct way. Fully 10 percent of America’s gun dealers line the Mexican border, and the country’s permissive gun laws make it an inexpensive and convenient source of powerful guns, ammunition, and explosives.