The United States has been fighting a war on drugs for several decades with no significant success. As the United States faces the worst opioid crisis in its history Mexico faces some of the most violent years it has ever seen. Both of these countries have primarily focused on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs while not putting the same effort at eliminating the demand for drugs. The matter of fact is that drugs have been part of human society for centuries and no matter how strict the laws against them are, the consumption of drugs is unlikely to stop. If the United States decriminalized the consumption of drugs, it could focus on helping those who are abusing them and eliminate the main source of revenue for black markets who profit off them. Through this initiative, the Mexican drug cartels will eventually stop fighting each other as there will be no trade routes or market to fight over and the United States government can get closer to achieving its goal of having more people living healthier lives.
This idea has been debated over time. Some people believe that the decriminalization of drugs will make the problem worse and some believe that this is the answer that both countries have been looking for. Carmen Boullosa, a novelist who specializes in feminist affairs in Latin America, argues that ever since the United States criminalized the use of drugs in the early 1900s, Mexico has suffered the worst effects. Her work focuses on promoting the decriminalization of drugs in the United States and we can see this being reflected when she states that “Prohibitionist policies based on the eradication of production as well as the criminalization of consumption have not yielded the expected results. Instead, the ‘war on drugs’ strategy pursued in the region over the past thirty years had led to the corruption of public servants, the judicial system, governments, the political system, and especially the police forces.”* Not only does she argue for the decriminalization of drugs, but she also argues that other forces profit from the war on drugs, and they would not like to see it disappear. She claims that the gun and prison industries are big lobbying forces towards drug illegalization to continue. She also states that “† The Drug Enforcement Administration would be hard-pressed to justify its annual budget of roughly $2.5 billion if the legal ground shifted beneath it.”‡
Another scholar that analyses this issue is Ami Carpenter, a conflict resolution, conflict analysis, and negotiations professor at the University of San Diego. Ami Carpenter looks at this issue through an economic and conflict analysis lense. She argues that the war on drugs has led to the United States providing assistance, mostly in the form of military equipment, and training of its police force. This militarization results in the ignoring of the other factors that contribute to the Mexican drug war – like corruption and mass poverty. She uses this argument as she analyses the effects of the Mexican drug war. She summarizes her approach when she states “The current strategy – based largely on the increased militarization of Mexico – ignores high-level government corruption that no one really wants to combat. It ignores a police force so weak, so ill-trained, so underpaid and so infiltrated that good apples are spoiled by rotten ones. It ignores a concentrated, oligopolistic economic structure that thwarts growth and social mobility, forcing people across the border or into the drug trade in record numbers…. It ignores the existence of a permanent subclass of 20 million people who live on less than two dollars a day and view drug cultivation as a way out of extreme poverty”§ Although this author looks at the effects of the Mexican drug war through an economic lens, she also argues that the United State’s obsession with eliminating the source of supply has to lead to the militarization of Mexico and as a result, more deaths and violence.
Aileen Teague, an associate professor of international affairs at the University of Texas A&M, also looked at the involvement of the United States in the Mexican drug war. He implies that the war in Mexico began when the United States got involved after DEA agent Enrique Kamarera was tortured and assassinated. After his assassination, the United States got more involved in Mexico’s affairs, which resulted in Mexico becoming militarized and violence skyrocketing. He best summarizes this when he states “Mexican drug enforcement was guided by the U.S. militarization of drug enforcement during the 1970s, and Mexican leaders applied U.S. ideas and resources to their social control operations in the countryside”¶
We saw how various scholars approach the involvement of the United States in the Mexican drug war. Although these authors look at different ways in which the US government got involved in the Mexican drug war, they all argue that this involvement increased the violence in Mexico and it began with the criminalization of drugs.
- *BOULLOSA, CARMEN, and MIKE WALLACE. A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the “Mexican Drug War”. New York; London: OR Books, 2015. Accessed March 6, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt18z4gtv.
- †BOULLOSA, CARMEN, and MIKE WALLACE. A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the “Mexican Drug War”. New York; London: OR Books, 2015. Accessed March 6, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt18z4gtv.
- ‡BOULLOSA, CARMEN, and MIKE WALLACE. A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the “Mexican Drug War”. New York; London: OR Books, 2015. Accessed March 6, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt18z4gtv.
- §Carpenter, Ami C. 2013. “Changing Lenses: Conflict Analysis and Mexico’s ‘Drug War.’” Latin American Politics & Society 55 (3): 139–60. doi:10.1111/j.1548-2456.2013.00206.x.
- ¶Teague, Aileen. 2019. “The United States, Mexico, and the Mutual Securitization of Drug Enforcement, 1969–1985.” Diplomatic History 43 (5): 785–812. doi:10.1093/dh/dhz035.