Mexican Drug Cartels: Scope, Effects, and the Illicit Drug Trade

Introduction

Mexico shares one of the world's longest borders with the United States and is one of its largest trading partners (Mexico economy, 2020). Despite periodic political disagreements over immigration policy, the United States and Mexico have maintained a strong bilateral relationship, and current indications suggest that this relationship will remain stable well into the foreseeable future. Notwithstanding these positive trends, both countries continue to face serious challenges posed by violent gangs of narco-traffickers known as Mexican drug cartels — organizations that generate billions of dollars in criminal proceeds while simultaneously exacting an enormous toll in human lives.

Some authorities estimate that as many as one hundred thousand people have died in drug cartel conflicts since 2006, and this figure does not account for the tens of thousands of American lives lost each year to illicit drug use fueled by cartel supply chains. Against this backdrop, it is reasonable to question why tens of billions of scarce taxpayer dollars continue to be spent on a "war" that claims thousands of American lives annually without any substantive return on these investments.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of the relevant literature concerning Mexican drug cartels in order to identify the extent of the problem, its primary antecedent causes, and what steps have been taken in recent years to combat these violent international drug organizations. In recognition that past efforts have largely been ineffective, an analysis of potential solutions is followed by a summary of the research and key findings in the paper's conclusion.

Background and Overview of Mexican Drug Cartels

In many ways, criminal elements in Mexico are well situated to exploit the market represented by the roughly 300 million citizens of the United States. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), "No other country in the world has a greater impact on the drug situation in the United States than does Mexico: the result of a shared border, Mexico's strategic location between drug producing and consuming countries, and a long history of criminal enterprises that specialize in cross-border smuggling" (Hoover, 2019, p. 2). This assessment underscores the structural advantages that Mexican cartels possess and explains why they have proven so difficult to dismantle.

Human Cost and Violence

Although precise figures are unavailable, some authorities have estimated that Mexican drug cartels have already claimed the lives of more than 60,000 people in Mexico — one of America's most important trading and strategic partners. To place this alarming figure in context, the estimate implies that approximately one person dies every hour due to cartel-related violence (Rizer, 2015). Even more troubling, other observers argue that these estimates are far too conservative, failing to account for deaths that go unreported each year; the actual figures may be twice as high or greater (Rizer, 2015). Moreover, even the most disturbing estimates do not account for the tens of thousands of American lives lost each year to illicit drug use fueled by Mexican cartel supply chains (Rizer, 2015).

The severity of the problem is further illustrated by a study by Mega (2019), which found that "across Mexico, drug-related violence has been on the rise for more than 12 years. The country documented 33,341 homicides last year — a record — [and] much of the surge was driven by a rise in increasingly violent drug gangs" (p. 37). Beyond this human cost, human trafficking has also grown into a significant dimension of cartel activity. A growing body of evidence indicates that Mexican drug cartels have forged expansive networks throughout South and Central America that channel thousands of unaccompanied minors across the U.S. border each year, destined primarily for southwestern states (Rizer, 2015).

Conclusion

Mexican drug cartels represent one of the most persistent and lethal threats to public safety in both Mexico and the United States. The evidence reviewed here demonstrates that cartel-related violence continues to intensify, that revenues generated by illicit drug trafficking are staggering, and that the shift toward opioids and synthetic drugs such as fentanyl has dramatically increased the human cost of the trade. Past law enforcement strategies — including decades of investment in the U.S. federal government's war on drugs — have failed to produce meaningful reductions in cartel power or drug availability.

These realities suggest that new approaches are necessary. As the people of the United States contend with the psychological toll of prolonged social crises, illicit drug use is likely to increase, making the threat posed by Mexican drug cartels even more acute. Policymakers, law enforcement agencies, and international partners must work collaboratively to develop more effective, evidence-based strategies that address both the supply of and demand for cartel-supplied drugs. Drug policy research increasingly points toward demand-reduction and public health frameworks as necessary complements to traditional enforcement efforts — a direction that merits serious consideration as conventional approaches continue to fall short.

References

Dhillon, U. (2020, January 30). DEA releases 2019 National Drug Threat Assessment. United States Drug Enforcement Agency. Retrieved from https://www.dea.gov

Hoover, W. (2019, March 17). Law enforcement responses to Mexican drug cartels. U.S. Department of Justice. Retrieved from

Mega, E. R. (2019, February). Violent drug cartels stifle Mexican science. Nature, 555(7744), 37–41.

Mexico economy. (2020). CIA World Factbook. Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/mexico/.

Rizer, A. (2015, Spring). Hannibal at the gate: Border kids, drugs, and guns — and the Mexican cartel war goes on. St. Thomas Law Review, 27(1), 19–22.

Rizzo, S. (2019, June 24). Do Mexican drug cartels make $500 billion a year? The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/24/do-mexican-drug-cartels-make-billion-year/.