Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 15:51:37 -0400
From: Chris Donald <[ai 256] at [ccn.cs.dal.ca]>
To: Multiple recipients of list <[d r ctalk] at [drcnet.org]>
Subject: REPOST ARTICLE San Diego CA Drugs? From Mexico? A real news flash (fwd)


Subject: ARTICLE San Diego CA Drugs? From Mexico? A real news flash

San Diego Union-Tribune
[l--t--s] at [uniontrib.com]
http:// www.uniontrib.com
Doug Hope Managing Editor
                             August  4, 1996, Sunday


HEADLINE: The drug trade climbs aboard shipments of goods from Mexico

BYLINE: Peter Andreas

ANDREAS is a research fellow at the Brookings Institution and coauthor of
" Drug War  Politics: The Price of Denial," to be published this summer by the
University of California Press.

 BODY:
   Mexico has long been enmeshed in the drug trade, but its involvement has
been transformed in the last decade.  Primarily, Mexico has emerged as the
primary
shipping point for Colombian  cocaine  into the United States.

The State Department estimates that the percentage of the  cocaine  bound
for the U.S. market entering through Mexico was negligible during the
mid-1980s but  increased to as much as 70 percent by 1995. Mexico also
supplies up to 30
percent of the  heroin  consumed in the United States and up to 80 percent of
the imported  marijuana,  according to a March 1996 State Department report.

   Mexico earns more than $7 billion a year from the illegal drug trade, the
Drug Enforcement Administration estimates. Some Mexican estimates place the
figure much higher.  The prosecutor general's office estimates that drug
traffickers operating in Mexico accumulated revenues of approximately $30
billion in 1994.

   Mexico's growing role in the drug trade has significantly increased the
power and wealth of Mexico's trafficking organizations and that has, in
turn,
exacerbated well-entrenched political corruption.

   Corrupt officials sell an essential service to drug traffickers: the
nonenforcement of the law.  Not surprisingly, as Mexico's role in the illicit
drug trade has grown, so too has the buying off of law enforcement -- not only
within Mexico, but on the U.S. side as well.

Not coincidentally, Mexico's expanding role in the drug trade parallels the
opening of the Mexican economy and the deepening of U.S.-Mexican economic
integration.

   Colombian  cocaine  traffickers began turning to Mexico as a major entry
point to the U.S. market in the early 1980s after the United States cracked
down on  cocaine  shipping through the Caribbean.  By now a strategic
alliance exists between Colombian and Mexican traffickers.  The Colombians
process the  cocaine  and ship it to Mexico, the Mexicans smuggle it into
the United States.

   Mexican imports of legal goods from Colombia increased from $17 million in
1980 to $121 million in 1985. At the same time, Mexican imports from the
rest of Latin America decreased from $768 million to $630 million.

   Legal exports from Mexico to the United States doubled between 1986 and
1993. Hiding drug shipments within the growing volume of goods exported
from Mexico to the United States has become an increasingly favored method
of smuggling
 cocaine.

   These trends thrive under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

A report written by an intelligence officer at the U.S. embassy in Mexico
City claims that  cocaine  traffickers established factories, warehouses and
trucking companies as fronts in Mexico in anticipation of the cross-border
commerce boom under NAFTA.

   "If NAFTA provides opportunity for legitimate businesses, it may clearly
provide opportunities for illegitimate businessmen," Assistant U.S. Attorney
Glenn MacTaggart has said.

   Trucking provides the most concrete illustration of this trend.
According to one senior customs official, to inspect every truck coming
across the border
would create a traffic jam as far as Mexico City. So only a small
percentage of  trucks are fully inspected.

   Under the NAFTA agreement, trucking into the United States from Mexico is
increasing rapidly.  In 1994, 2.8 million trucks crossed over from Mexico. In
1993, on the eve of NAFTA, the number was 1.9 million. The U.S. Southwest
Border Capital Improvement Program will upgrade the road network so that it
will be
able to handle more than double today's traffic level -- as many as 8.4 million  trucks annually.

Mexican truckers will soon be allowed to operate throughout the border
states of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.  They will eventually
be able to
travel anywhere in the United States and Canada.

   Trucks can carry illegal goods as easily as legal goods.  One truck that
was  stopped near San Diego carried 8 tons of  cocaine  stuffed into cans
of jalapeno peppers.  Law enforcement officials believe that the  cocaine
belonged to a
businessman who owns one of the biggest trucking companies in Mexico.

   As part of an effort to hide drugs within trans-border shipments of legal
goods, some Mexican traffickers have reportedly hired trade consultants to
determine which products move most quickly through border inspection under
NAFTA guidelines.  "They have very specific issues," notes Craig Chretien,
the special agent in charge of the DEA's San Diego office.  "Does a
perishable get through
quicker than a load of steel?  What kind of cargoes go through faster than
others?"

   Concerns about drug control were not discussed during the negotiations over
NAFTA.  "This was in the too hot to handle' category," says Gary Hufbauer, an
economist at the Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C.
Reportedly, U.S. customs and drug enforcement personnel openly call NAFTA the
"North American Drug Trade Agreement."

Meanwhile, the privatization of state-owned enterprises and the
deregulation  of the Mexican banking system facilitate the laundering of
drug profits.

   And the cutting of government subsidies in Mexico's rural areas are
increasing the incentive for peasant farmers to produce illegal crops such as
 marijuana.

   An internal DEA report -- obtained by the National Security Archive through
the Freedom of Information Act -- concludes that "increased illicit drug
production will probably be a direct result of the discontinuation of
subsistence crop subsidies." Drug production is expanding in Mexico's more
remote rural regions.

   Efforts to cut the foreign drug supply into the United States have a long
history of failure.  And the likelihood of success diminishes further as
market  liberalization and economic integration propel ever more extensive
cross-border  exchange.

   Evaluations of free market reform are largely divorced and insulated from
evaluations of drug market prohibition.  Thus, congressional committees and
government agencies endlessly debate how to attack the drug supply and gain
greater cooperation from Mexico and other Latin American countries.

Meanwhile, those concerned with the implementation of market-based reforms
carefully monitor an assortment of economic indicators.  The reports they
publish rarely even mention the drug trade, let alone discuss its ties to the
formal economy.

   It is as if drug trafficking were not an economic matter at all.  But while
such institutionalized denial may be politically convenient, it perpetuates
both a fundamental misreading of the problem and unworkable strategies for
dealing
with it.