Drug Trafficking Is the Story of an Economic Issue: Benjamin T. Smith

With the story of Cruz, a boy born in Carácuaro, in the heart of Michoacán’s Tierra Caliente, who never wanted to be part of the world of drug traffickingbut he went from being a hawk to an undocumented immigrant in the United States, fleeing from hit men, and pointed out by the American justice as a ruthless, psychopathic and violent drug trafficker who was only interested in drugging the vulnerable American youth and then thrown back to Mexican soil, the historian Benjamin T. Smith, begins the exhibition of more than 100 years of history of drug trafficking in Mexico, with everything and its myths, bosses, excesses, misfortunes and failed public policies.

In the book The drug. The true story of drug trafficking in Mexicoedited by Debate Penguin Random House, the historian from the University of Warwick, United Kingdom, exposes the empowerment of Mexican drug traffickers and the responsibilities of authorities in Mexico and the United States in the pernicious consequences of this activity.

In an interview with El Economista, he shares some of the findings of this investigation that led him to review around 30 files and conduct more than 50 interviews with people related to this activity, as illegal as it is profitable.

The force that motivates drug trafficking is and always has been economic

He says that the United States is a nation that has an immense and prevalent appetite for narcotics. Until the 1990s, he consumed around 70% of the cocaine produced in the world.

The combination of high demand and low wages in Mexico has created enormous incentives for drug production and trafficking.

─In the 1990s, to get the equivalent of the salary of a Mexican taxi driver, what a drug trafficker needed to do was sell a single marijuana plant on the streets of the United States, he points out.

That is why there is drug trafficking. You can put all the drug dealers in jail and it will not end, he stresses.

Police and politicians have always tried to benefit.

—What I found is that in Mexico (and also in the United States) the authorities in charge of attacking drug trafficking always chose their favorite drug traffickers, protected them and asked for money for their protection.

During the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, the governors of places on the border, but also where drugs were grown, such as Sinaloa, used money (and I have proof of that) to build schools, roads, and to grow the Mexican State. .

During the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the governments, especially the federal government and particularly the Federal Police, used this money from drug trafficking to provide uniforms, to buy weapons, and to build police stations. And then what happened?

“During the 1990s, some drug traffickers made so much money from the cocaine market that they began to try to instead of just pay the authorities for their protection, they began to try to take control of the protection networks and they began to confront some of the authorities who were controlling the protection networks.

“Now we are in this world where the so-called cartels, in alliance with politicians, are fighting for control of protection networks and sadly these protection networks not only involve drugs, but also extortion, kidnapping, trafficking in women and other crimes. ”.

The failure of anti-drug policies

It exposes that the myths around drug trafficking promote the idea that punitive policies are a logical and necessary reaction to real threats. They directly attack bosses, drug traffickers or producers, because they believe that it is the most efficient way to prevent the US population from consuming drugs, but such policies are rarely implemented because they are effective.

“In reality they are motivated by invented panics, by the bureaucratic need to obtain state funds and because they serve to find scapegoats. That is why they are designed to attack any group that is easy to milk.”

The implementation of public policies through the use of force has caused an increase in violence

He explains that, until the 1970s, violence was rarely used to settle disputes between drug traffickers. For that, blood ties and closeness worked, such as state protection networks that preferred to avoid conflicts.

Then new authorities tried to undermine old protection networks and impose their own.

Over the past 40 years, a growing number of groups have jockeyed for control of safety nets, and they no longer include only local but also federal politicians.

In the last 15 years, many gangs have tried to extend these protection networks to other businesses, which is why the violence has spread.

The other main cause of violence is anti-drug policies that result in murders condoned by the State, in addition to dividing drug trafficking networks and turning some groups against others.

According to the historian, there are currently many additional causes that explain the frenetic increase in murders in Mexico, such as the substantial increase in other crimes, the growth of the local drug market, arms trafficking, and the almost complete collapse of the judicial system.

Most of the violence today is not caused by lawsuits between drug traffickers, but by lawsuits between the authorities to control the money that comes from drug trafficking.

Why has neither supply nor demand been reduced?

—The only way to reduce demand is to build health and psychiatric services to care for people. In the United States, only about 60% of the population has access to health services.

Something similar occurs in Mexico, where there are many problems with its health services. There are places where a part of the population suffers from severe addiction problems, even to substances such as fentanyl.

diego.badillo@eleconomista.mx