In light of increasing media coverage about the drug trade in Mexico, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story yesterday about how the U.S. appetite for illegal drugs appears to be insatiable, fueling drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States.
The Chronicle reports:
The Mexican drug cartels battling viciously to expand and survive have a powerful financial incentive: Across the border to the north is a market for illegal drugs unsurpassed for its wealth, diversity and voraciousness.
Homeless heroin addicts in big cities, “meth heads” in Midwest trailer parks, pop culture and sports stars, teens smoking marijuana with their Baby Boomer parents in Vermont – in all, 46 percent of Americans 12 and older have indulged in the often destructive national pastime of illicit drug use.
This array of consumers is providing a vast, recession-proof, apparently unending market for the Mexican gangs locked in a drug war that has killed more than 10,780 people since December 2006. No matter how much law enforcement or financial help the U.S. government provides Mexico, the basics of supply and demand prevent it from doing much good.
The sociological commentary…
The Mexican cartels are eager to feed this ravenous appetite. Once used mostly to transship drugs from South America, Mexico is now a major producer and distributor; its gangs control cocaine networks in many U.S. cities and covertly grow marijuana on U.S. public lands.
For now, the Mexican government is fighting the cartels and working with U.S. authorities who have promised to stop the southbound flow of weapons and cash – but all parties are aware of the role played by the U.S. market.
“When the U.S. government turns up the pressure a lot, then is when you see a return to the old formula of saying (to Americans), ‘You also have corruption, you consume the drugs, you’re the biggest drug consumer in the world,’ ” said Jose Luis Pineyro, a sociologist at Mexico’s Autonomous Metropolitan University.
Another sociologist weighs in…
Studies of youth drug use in Western Europe show a few countries with serious problems, but overall a far lower portion of young people there are abusing drugs than in America. Elsewhere around the world, drug use also is widespread, though data is generally not as thorough as in the United States.
“There’s no escaping the fact that we have the highest drug rates in the world,” said Craig Reinarman, a sociologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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