A New Perspective: Mexico's Multiple Drug Wars

Yesterday, I got an email from my editor at Palgrave MacMillan with the design their art department came up with for my book cover. I absolutely loved it, and also noted that my book's title had changed (again). The new title is Cartel: The Coming Invasion of Mexico's Drug Wars. I like it, but thought I might have to ask for a correction because they used "Wars" plural, and I've always talked about the drug "war" singular.

Then I thought about it, and realized that there really is more than one drug war going on in Mexico. There are more like three, and each has very distinct characteristics and goals.

In the first war, the combatants are the Mexican government (in the form of the military and various law enforcement agencies) and the DTOs. The battles between the two are being fought anywhere and everywhere you can find drug trafficking activity, and the conflict is complicated. DTOs have infiltrated their enemy through bribery, threats, and extortion, and have some degree of control over lesser government institutions because of these coercive tactics. They manipulate the media by tossing hand grenades at their officers, and draw support from the population through psychological means or death threats. The most visible signs of this war are the gun battles in broad daylight between soldiers, federal police, and DTO members.

The second war is going on between the DTOs themselves. This one is also complicated because there are at least seven combatants, the territorial lines are always moving, and alliances and splits can occur or dissolve at the drop of a hat. Truces and cease-fires are possible, but are subject to the whimsy of the DTO members who initiate them. The killing is often personal, and almost always sends a message to the DTO "owner" of the victim, based on whether the deceased was merely a rival, a snitch, or incompetent.

The third war is mostly happening in Ciudad Juárez, although it's occurring at lower levels in other parts of Mexico - the war of sheer chaos. In Juárez, it used to be that authorities knew who the major players were. It was the Sinaloa Federation and the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Organization duking it out for control of the border's most lucrative drug smuggling corridor. While they both still wield influence there, the authorities no longer really know who's killing whom in Juárez. There are roughly 500 colonias, or neighborhoods, in the city, and each one has its own gang. Many of these gangs are affiliated with one DTO or the other. Regardless, these local gangs spend a lot of time killing each other for control of the local drug trade. Many are addicts, and kill for money or drugs. As the violence increases there, the level of understanding of the conflict decreases, as does the government's interest and ability to stop it.

Finally, there's the coming war that we're starting to get some glimpses of: the war with the hand that feeds the DTOs, the United States. DTOs are extremely hesitant to engage in any open conflict with US authorities because it's bad for business, and they have an extremely lucrative business model that operates in more than 270 of our cities. But we're seeing some of these confrontations occur between our law enforcement officers and DTO-controlled marijuana growers in US national parks, smugglers shooting at Border Patrol agents across the border, and smugglers getting into high-speed chases with Sheriff's deputies. The first DTO-related beheading occurred recently in Chandler, Arizona, and five tortured and mutilated bodies - at the behest of the Gulf cartel - were found in 2009 outside a safe house in northern Alabama.

This fourth war is the most worrisome because it's the most insidious and the most dangerous. The enemy has already crossed the front lines, and has been operating - and thriving - on enemy territory for decades. DTOs are often able to get contraband past our border checkpoints, and are skilled in techniques of deception and evasion. They're constantly testing our defenses, and adapting to them.

Looking at the Mexico situation from this perspective really highlights the need for a multi-faceted approach from both the Mexican and US governments in trying to defeat the DTOs. It also highlights the almost insurmountable challenges associated with that task. Fighting one drug war was bad enough, but three? With another one probably on the way? But this is the reality facing both governments and their law enforcement agencies, and they need to be prepared for multiple wars on multiple fronts if they stand any chance of making progress.

Comments

[T. Johnson]

Why not take a completely different approach. Instead of fighting fire with fire, cut off the oxygen.
Regulate drugs so that the people who use drugs don't rely on an illegal market supplied by the cartels. The government gains tax revenue, less people are jailed for things they shouldn't be,the cartels have no-one to sell to and the safety of the products is ensured. With careful planning we can ensure that drug use does not increase, and everyone wins.

[Sylvia Longmire]

@T - I couldn't agree with you more. I'm not a fan of legalizing "hard drugs" like cocaine and heroin, but marijuana seems like a no-brainer for exactly the reasons you mentioned.

[Jo MacMahaan]

I completely agree with T's proposal to decriminalize, legalize and tax marijuana. Others argue that marijuana leads to harder drugs. But is that mostly because the source for procuring marijuana is the same source for harder drugs - you have to enter the criminal world to obtain the marijuana.

[strayan]

Define 'hard drugs'.

LSD: no recorded fatal overdoses. Not addictive: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1755-5949.2008.00059.x/abstract

Cannabis: no recorded fatal overdoses.

Heroin: can be safely given to children as young as 3 for pain relief: http://www.bmj.com/content/322/7281/261.full

MDMA: rarely addictive. Most deaths occuring as a result of substitution with dangerous chemicals or water intoxication. Too much water = death.

GHB: as dangerous as alcohol: http://jop.sagepub.com/content/23/1/94.abstract

Methamphatmine: routinely given to children 6 years and older: http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/DrugSafety/ucm088582.pdf

What are these harder drugs you're talking about?

[Sylvia Longmire]

@Strayan - Heroin and cocaine are listed as Schedule II drugs, which means they do have some medical uses, but it also means they're highly addictive. Meth is even more addictive than cocaine. I would highly recommend that you watch a series the National Geographic Channel recently aired called "Drugged: High on..." - they have an episode for marijuana, MDMA, and cocaine. It shows scientifically how each drug does what it does to a person's body, and films several people high on each drug so you can watch how they behave and feel. Here are links to the shows:
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/series/drugged/5507/Overview88#tab-infographic

[JoseAngeldeMonterrey]

Excellent article.

I think that in general the Mexican government has been hitting the DTOs very hard arresting and killing many drug lords, more than any other time in history. Many criminals working for these DTOs have also been killed. There have been more that 30,000 people killed in this war and everybody agrees that the great mayority have been the criminals themselves getting killed everyday.

Before Calderon took power there were some divisions among the DTOs but nothing compared to what it´s happening now. There was actually a federation of drug cartels and their leaders met regularly. Those days are over, the Mexican government divided the cartels successfuly and it their endless deadly battles are weaking them and in some way making it easier for the authorities to take them.

Take the zetas for example, they used to be ex-soldiers from the Mexican and Guatemala armies, today most of those soldiers who initiated the gang have been killed and they had recruited young boys who are easy targets for the Mexican Army.

[Sarah Marks]

The rather fuzzy fact is, decade after decade, remove the profit incentive, decrease the drug related crime explosion. Wonder if people will ever be able to see the problem rationally? Sometimes it is very discouraging.

[KL]

@Strayan - Sorry, but no intellectually or morally intact person can argue that meth is anything other than dangerous and evil -- and I choose that latter term very intentionally. Citing abstract scientific papers, as you do, is simply casuistic.

Meth is evil. It destroys individuals, families, and communities. Meth literally erodes the dopamine synapses of the brain, rendering the addict unable to experience pleasure normally. Once they're hooked, kicking the drug means returning to a world markedly different from the one they departed when they started using: nothing the addict enjoyed before meth will be quite as enjoyable again, because their brain has suffered a specific kind of damage, a neurochemical stripping of their Pleasure Reward Pathway (PRP). Which is why meth addicts have such a hard time getting clean, and such a high rate of relapse: they need the drug to feel "normal" again.

Can we agree there's something evil about that, in the context of someone encouraging others to use such a highly addictive and permanently damaging drug "recreationally"?

With respect, if you have not witnessed the destruction wrought by meth addiction first hand, then you don't know what you're talking about, no matter how many scientific papers you cite. Santa Clara County ("Silicon Valley") has four judges who do nothing, workday after workday, but take children away from meth-addicted parents. That is not an exaggeration, that is literally the work load. (OK, there may be a few oxycodone or heroin addicts in there, but the lion's share of cases is meth addicts -- you get the point.) Think about the raw human misery that judicial workload represents. It's a quiet social disaster, one sort of invisible to people whose lives are not touched in some way by drug addiction.

Look, as a society we have to come to some realistic accommodation with mind-altering substances. They're as old as civilization, and probably a little older than that. But there are good reasons why your laundry list of substances above should be carefully controlled and -- in my opinion -- mostly banned. California has pretty much de facto legalized pot (a $150 consultation fee to a Physician's Assistant can get you a medical marijuana card to treat your "stress"), and at the moment that's creating all kinds of problems. I think we'd all agree a 16-year-old completely blitzed on alcohol (say a .16% BAL, twice the legal limit for an adult) should not be driving. OK, how about a 16-year-old baked on a potent strain of "medical" marijuana? Well guess what? The second case is not currently illegal, even if that kid is swerving all over the road (you can get him for the reckless driving, but his being high on pot while driving is not per se illegal). Obviously, the legal system is going to have to catch up with the in-the-street reality we are now living in.

With some thoughtful law-crafting, I am in favor of marijuana being generally legalized, only because on balance I think it will represent less social harm, overall: it won't eradicate the illegal drug trade (as the RAND Corporation also argues in a recent report: http://www.rand.org/news/press/2010/10/12.html), but it will substantially decrease the black market and provide a tax base to support additional monitoring and LE action.

Sorry, I know I sound insufferably preachy, but I get incensed when I hear obviously intelligent people argue in favor of legalizing drugs, as if crack, meth, or heroin were the same as pot. All drugs are not created equal; some of them should remain strictly controlled, for very good reasons. Legalization is not some panacea or silver bullet solution for the problems represented by the illegal drug trade -- but "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

[strayan]

There is no scientific catergory called 'hard drugs'. It has been invented.

All drugs are potentially dangerous. Paracetamol/acetaminophen, for example, is responsible for an staggering number of overdoses in the USA. Do we consider that a 'hard drug'? What about alcohol? Is that a 'hard drug'? Caffeine intoxication can cause death. Does that make caffeine a 'hard drug'?

[Bill]

@strayan - You need to step away from the caffeine!