0.2 The growth of the drug cartels

In 1914, the United States Congress passed the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, the country’s first major effort to regulate the production, importation, and distribution of opiate drugs such as heroin, opium, and laudanum. Federal, state, and local laws against marijuana, cocaine, and other drugs soon followed, often accompanied by harsh penalties for their violation. Mexico, a major producer of marijuana and a significant source of opium, enacted similar laws, thus criminalizing what had long been legal behavior. The passage of such laws did little to affect the desire for the drugs in question, so Mexican farmers and entrepreneurs, now operating as outlaws, developed ways of smuggling their contraband products across the border to the United States. Although that task was fairly easy in the early years, the risks incurred in getting an illegal product from field to customer drove prices upward and produced substantial profits for those along the supply and delivery chain. The lure of lucre attracted a variety of criminal gangs to their enterprise. Eventually, as in many businesses, consolidation occurred and a powerful Guadalajara-based crime figure, Miguel Angel Félix Gallardo, managed to gain control over most of the cross-border drug business.

In September 1969, U.S. President Richard Nixon formally declared a War on Drugs, aimed at marijuana, heroin (from Asia as well as Mexico), cocaine (from South America), and newly popular drugs such as LSD. The key components of that war, now waged for 40 years, have been eradication, interdiction, and incarceration. Despite the eradication of millions of marijuana, coca, and opium plants, the seizure of hundreds of tons of contraband, and the incarceration of hundreds of thousands of offenders, accomplished at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, the successes of the War on Drugs have been few and impermanent. Demand levels vary over time, but the supply is always sufficient to meet it, often with a product of high quality. Difficulties in bringing a drug to market may raise the price, but that can also increase profits, assuring a ready supply of volunteers willing to take the risks.

At times, apparent success in one arena produces devastation in another. In the early 1980s, for example, U.S. operations aimed at thwarting the smuggling of cocaine from Colombia via Florida and the Caribbean proved sufficiently effective that the Colombians turned to Félix Gallardo and the extensive organization under his control. Soon, Mexico became the primary transshipment route for an estimated 90 percent of the cocaine that reached the United States, and the riches that accrued to that partnership grew to unimagined levels. Under Félix Gallardo’s oversight, the Colombian-Mexican coalition operated rather smoothly, in spite of stepped-up efforts by U.S. agents at major transit spots along the border and U.S. pressure on the Mexican government to increase its own anti-drug efforts.