This paper evaluates the effectiveness of Mexico's war on drugs under President Vicente Fox, who took office in December 2000 and immediately launched a series of anti-drug initiatives, including the 2001–2006 National Drug Control Plan. Despite high-profile cartel arrests and increased U.S.–Mexico intelligence sharing, the paper argues that these efforts ultimately failed to reduce the drug supply, which grew substantially between 2002 and 2003. The analysis highlights pervasive government and police corruption, the decentralization of drug trafficking organizations, and the deep integration of the drug economy into Mexico's legitimate economy as key factors undermining policy effectiveness. The paper concludes that U.S.-encouraged policies risked destabilizing Mexico rather than defeating organized crime.
The paper employs a counterargument-and-rebuttal structure: it first acknowledges the legitimate efforts of the Fox administration before systematically dismantling the assumption that those efforts were effective. This technique — conceding surface-level progress while exposing deeper structural failures — is an effective way to engage critically with policy without dismissing complexity.
The paper opens by summarizing Fox's anti-drug initiatives and then introduces the central thesis: that enormous profits and entrenched corruption undermine those efforts. Subsequent paragraphs address rising drug cultivation, police and government corruption, the decentralization of cartels, and the integration of the drug economy into legitimate commerce. The conclusion synthesizes these threads, warning of potential destabilization. The structure is compact but logically sequenced, moving from policy description to evidence of failure to broader consequence.
Advocates of the war on drugs claim that the Government of Mexico was well on its way to victory after Vicente Fox-Quesada assumed the presidency in December 2000. After taking office, President Fox launched a national assault against drug trafficking and organized crime, developed the 2001–2006 National Drug Control Plan, and designated the trafficking of drugs a national security issue. Under the Fox administration, Mexican authorities arrested key members of the major cartels and dramatically increased intelligence sharing between the United States and Mexican governments. However, a never-ending supply of narcotics and corruption fueled by enormous profits appear to be rendering Fox's legitimate efforts ineffective. In fact, policies encouraged by the United States and executed by Fox may hold the potential for the future destabilization of Mexico.
During the period of stepped-up enforcement by the Mexican government, the drug supply in Mexico only increased. For example, the country saw a seventy percent increase in marijuana cultivation and a seventy-eight percent increase in opium poppy cultivation from 2002 to 2003. This occurred despite intensive eradication efforts in 2003, during which Mexican law enforcement agencies seized 2,019 metric tons of marijuana, 354 kilograms of opium and heroin, and 20 metric tons of cocaine. There appears to be a never-ending supply of drugs that eradication efforts simply cannot keep pace with.
Government, military, and police corruption remains rampant in Mexico. In January 2003, a special anti-drugs unit comprising 700 members had to be disbanded because of corruption within its ranks. Just four months later, a Mexican governor fired the entire state police force — consisting of 550 officers — after two senior officers were jailed amid accusations of aiding a drug cartel. The large sums of money involved have made corruption extremely difficult to eradicate. According to analysts cited in the Chronicle, "Mexican drug gangs make $3 billion to $30 billion annually by smuggling cocaine over the U.S. border and say they have police, politicians, and judges on their payrolls."
Many analysts fear that the democratic political system in Mexico could collapse under an assault by leftist insurgencies allied with powerful drug traffickers. Critics charge that United States policy incorrectly assumes that eliminating the top drug lords will cause their organizations to fall apart, thereby greatly reducing the flow of illegal drugs into the United States. In contrast, some analysts believe that these efforts are only decentralizing the drug trade. Instead of a few large organizations controlling the trade, hundreds of loosely organized groups have taken control. As a result, violence has become pervasive, with the potential for broader political destabilization to follow.
The fundamental problem with President Fox's attempts to curb Mexico's drug activities is that the drug economy had already become deeply integrated into the legitimate economy long before he took office. As he made inroads into eradication and the elimination of corruption, rapid replacements emerged, eager to profit from the multi-billion dollar trade. Unfortunately, one cannot simply argue that Mexico is no worse off than it was before the war on drugs began. Centralization has been replaced by decentralization, posing a significant risk of destabilization — an outcome that neither the Mexican government nor its American partners originally anticipated.
"Mexico Fights U.S. Drug War." Common Sense for Drug Policy. 5 Sept. 2004.
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