Over a decade after former President Felipe Calderon launched a militarized crusade against drug cartels, Mexico has recorded its highest homicide rate of 19.4 since the interior ministry began keeping records, with a staggering 29,168 murders in 2017. Despite lethal military deployment and a winning ‘kingpin-strategy’ (Nieto has neutralized 89% of drug-cartel leaders on his list), it has only culminated in spikes of drug-violence that have left over 175,000 dead in the last 10 years. That is, because military force won’t halt the leading U.S. demand for drugs (and weapon smuggling), eliminate the incentive to join cartels in a poverty-stricken country with farmers hurt by NAFTA, or the corruption which the narco-state burgeons on.
The cartel violence reigning down in Mexico is the result of a profitable illegal industry competing for territory, empowered by corruption, and sustained by poverty. A decade of failing drug war policy requires a different kind of diplomacy – a way to remove the profit incentive altogether. The government has amped up organized-crime-combatting efforts, but security analysts agree that they’ve unwittingly led to a violence-wave as kingpins fight for control. Legalization of drugs is the quickest death to cartels and their endless terror.
Although such a far-fetched proposal is considered political suicide on both sides of the border, it’s a strategy which has been economically and statistically proven to work by the growing number of U.S. states legalizing marijuana. Marijuana legalization has already slashed cartel profit and decreased violence in Mexico. Marijuana seizures on the U.S.-Mexico border are down from 4 million pounds (2009) to 1.5 (2015) with the Mexican army seeing a 32% drop in confiscations. (The lowest levels in the last decade.) Subsequently, this has resulted in what military force has failed to do – decreased violence.
Legalization eliminates the astounding U.S. demand fueling the black market. Nonetheless, to understand solutions, we must understand the causes. The U.S. is the leading consumer of drugs – more drugs are purchased by them than the rest of the world combined. After the Decada Perdida where 800,000 jobs were lost, by the 90s, 85% of U.S. cocaine came through Mexico. During Felipe Calderon’s term, the Mérida Initiative of militarized-combat was put into effect as the mean to a fruitless end. A whopping U.S.-sponsored $1.6 billion later, and the war between drug cartels has killed 63,000 in the past six years.
Without demand for an illegal good, there would be no black market. Black markets fuel violence since disputes can’t be resolved within legal institutions, but rather with U.S. smuggled guns. (Seventy-percent of guns seized in Mexico and traced by the US Bureau of ATF from 2009 to 2014 came from the US). Without demand there would be no drug crime, or the skyrocketing levels of corruption generated by participants infiltrating municipal police forces, and bribing the legal system. A level so high it leaves the country ranked at 123rd among 176 countries in the 2016 CPI. Legalization would eliminate the profit-incentive for cartels to exist – and therefore impose violence and corrupt the governmental system.
According to the Washington Post, it’s estimated that a “$2,000 kilogram of cocaine could be imported for less than $50 and sold for a small markup from its price in Colombia.” While criminalization drives the cost to $20,000, retailing for over $100,000. Without these profits, the cartels and their heinous crimes against humanity would cease.
Public health qualms about such a radical proposal are often raised, but countries that have decriminalized have seen little to no increase in drug use. For one, Portugal’s drug decriminalization has reduced drug-related harm. Drug use has decreased since, with rates maintained below the European average (far lower than the U.S.) Furthermore, state-control prevents overdoses and spread of disease caused by a lack of regulation.
However, drug violence doesn’t operate in a vacuum; the epidemic is created through decades of complex sociopolitical conditions. One of those being the 45.5% poverty rate of a country ranking 13th in GDP. In a recent presidential debate MORENA candidate Obrador rightfully argued that reducing poverty was the only way to fight cartels. It’s join or starve for many that find themselves without job prospects or educational attainment. And cartels recruit from this urban unemployed sector. The 1980s economic crisis which resulted in 800,000 job losses exacerbated inequality and eliminated upward mobility opportunities.
These conditions were aggravated by NAFTA which hurt farmers with the removal of tariffs and quotas on imports. Farmers then resorted to growing marijuana to survive due to the removal of these subsidies.
Furthermore, corruption facilitates mass violence. The country earned the narco-state label due to the number of police are involved in kidnappings, extortions, and protection for organized crime in exchange for bribes. They’re considered the most corrupt public-institution in the country, with the lowest reliability for crime protection. To decrease corruption levels, they must continue down the path of firing corrupt officials as Attorney General Morales has with 10% of the police force. It must also raise police salaries of $588 a month. The benefits would exceed the cost (which is over 10% of GDP.)
Decades of the drug war has resulted in Mexico’s highest homicide rate since its recorded history. It’s cost the country not only US $134 billion, but endless lives. Mexico must eliminate the black market by decriminalizing, expand poverty-relief programs to prevent cartel recruitment, clamp down on corruption by overhauling its police force, and end weapon smuggling.
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