Army Bob: The Wall would help slow drug cartel woes

by Robert M. Traxler

Remittances, or contributions sent by Mexicans living abroad (mostly in the United States) to their families at home in Mexico comprised $28.5 billion in 2017 and was arguably the largest source of income for the Mexican State.

In 2015, remittances overtook oil to become the single largest foreign source of income for Mexico, larger than any other economic sector. No need to ask why Mexico does not stop illegal immigration; drugs however are the great unknown in the Mexican economy.

Lumping drugs into “exports,” it is hard to find a credible source of information on the importance of drugs to the Mexican economy or to the government of Mexico. The corruption in Mexico is now mainstream; a vast portion of government officials and law enforcement officers are on the cartel payrolls. The corruptions is now in its third generation and a mainstream fact of everyday life.

A kilo of cocaine sells for two thousand dollars in Columbia; at the Mexican border with the United States, it sells for thirty thousand dollars; at the city limits in New York it sells for two hundred thousand dollars.

The entrepreneurship of the Mexican drug cartels is impressive; their ability to change and adapt to market forces has been a factor for generations. In the 1960s/70s the drug of choice was marijuana and Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) followed latter by Phencyclidine (PCP or angle dust), the drug of choice of the American counter culture. Amphetamines and alcohol were the drugs of choice of the more “socially acceptable folks”.

Crystal meth gained popularity in the 1990s, and cocaine and marijuana remained staples of the drug market. Again, the illegal drug industry adjusted and adapted to the market forces.

The latest drug of choice is fentanyl, developed in the 1960s by Janssen Pharmaceutical as a painkiller and anesthetic 100 times more powerful and with fewer side effects than morphine. Fentanyl has been an outstanding pain killer, especially when used in a slow released patch form; cancer patients find the drug a wonderful source of pain relief with less nausea and less brain fog.

As with most drugs, it can be abused, and is. Most fentanyl comes across the Mexican border after being produced in bulk in China or Mexico using Chinese chemists. Made into pill form, it is then smuggled to the estimated 39 million Americans who abuse all types of drugs (nearly four times as many customers as Starbucks has per day).

Having worked international drug interdiction during my years in the Army Criminal investigation Command (CID), I am absolutely convinced that illicit drugs will never be stopped through law enforcement. Slowed perhaps but not stopped, not as long as the market exists and trillions are to be made. Americans are ready, willing and able to purchase train loads of drugs coming from Mexico and other source nations. The profit margin is just too great to stop and market forces too strong.

Sinaloa, a Mexican state, is very dependent on the illegal drug industry; the economy is based on illicit drug income, and business is good. The state of Sinaloa is a “company town” and the business is the drug cartel. The drug cartel is more affluent, more powerful and better armed than the government folks, who are paid and paid handsomely to look away.

Let’s not kid ourselves —  illicit drugs will not go away. We have tried education, enforcement and social pressure for over 60 years;  three generations of Americans, all to no avail. The billions spent to stop drugs may have slowed the market but not much and not for long. As long as illegal drug users are mainstream Americans numbering in the tens of millions, as long as market forces demand drugs and billions are to be made per day, the industry will never go away.

We may force the drug industry to relocate but never stop it. As long as we have demand a supply will exist. The President’s wall will slow drug availability some and slow illegal immigration a lot. Let’s build the wall and keep some of the 28.5 billion in annual remittances, and nearly that amount in drugs going to Mexico, here in our economy, and at least make it harder for the drug cartels.