Since former President Nixon officially declared ‘war on drugs’ in 1970, the drug lords of Mexico have had little to slow them down from overtaking and amplifying the American drug market. With $1 trillion having been spent on combating drug cartels, drug smuggling, and gang violence since Nixon’s time, the U.S.’s War on Drugs has conceptually failed. After fighting Columbian cocaine distribution during the 1990s, cocaine production, smuggling, and violence transferred to Mexican territory where trans-border importation is more easily attained. Today, seven prominent Mexican drug cartels exist throughout the country’s 31 states. Mexico remains the world’s largest cocaine distributor, and the U.S.’s largest supplier of methamphetamines and marijuana. Thanks to its 1,952 mile-long border with the U.S., and both western and eastern cartel-controlled maritime ports, Mexico is a leading thoroughfare for cocaine, heroin, and stimulant distribution for international importation and U.S. exportation.

In December 2006, Mexican President Calderon declared a war on drugs and his nation’s feared drug cartels. Calderon has deployed a total of 45,000 troops and 5,000 federal agents to 18 of Mexico’s states in one of the world’s bloodiest battles today. Since 2007, an estimated 22,700 people have died as a result of drug-related violence. During his presidency, President Obama has held over a dozen meetings with President Calderon in both the U.S. and Mexico to discuss the progress of the campaign against illegal drug trade and the U.S. support of Mexican militia training and supplies. Since formation of the Merida Initiative—U.S.’s $1.4 billion security co-operation with Mexico and other Central American nations for military training and equipment for the purpose of combating drug trafficking and intercontinental crime—Mexico and the U.S. have failed to curtail the success of the lucrative drug trafficking business.

Calderon’s administration has influenced major shifts in power amongst the drug cartels as leaders are arrested or killed in police combat. The changing balance of power inside the cartel families, as well as cartel-related disputes over Mexican territory, has modified operations and alliances amongst cartels and added to the level of violence. Cartel lieutenants and their troops have attacked and slaughtered thousands of their opponents, Mexican forces, and Mexican citizens in their ongoing battles to control profitable drug-trafficking routes to the U.S. Guns are bought in the U.S. and smuggled into Mexico where violence has become magnified in the last 3 years. In his speech at the White House, President Calderon asked Congress to renew its ban on assault weapons to help aid his efforts against the drug cartels. Many of these weapons that make their way to Mexico, Calderon stated, end up in the hands of cartel members who kill thousands each year.

In addition, President Calderon stated that the growing success of drug trafficking is fueled by America’s steadfast addiction to drugs. President Obama has repeatedly acknowledged that U.S. drug consumption is part of the problem in the war on drugs. Today, an estimated 25 million Americans have a substance abuse disorder. After 40 years of ‘War on Drugs,’ the number of American drug addicts has increased by 10 million. The U.S., the world’s largest drug consumer, has made Mexico the world’s leading drug supplier and distributor. U.S. efforts to infiltrate drug trafficking, such as $49 billion spent on law enforcement, $121 billion spent on the criminal justice system, and $350 billion spent on federal incarceration, have actually made the illegal drug trade a more successful business. Inside and outside of prison, drug lords continue to operate their trafficking business, and investigative teams have trouble gathering evidence or making it stick since informants, witnesses, and agents are more often intimidated, threatened, tortured, or killed. Only 75% of U.S. arrests related to drug trafficking are able to be processed, and thousands of cases are acquitted each year. The drug industry is too profitable of a business that others are more than willing to replace drug leaders as they die off. Fighting violence with violence, it seems, has not given the U.S. an advantage over drug consumption.

In his historic 2011 $15.5 billion drug control policy, President Obama is pledging only $5.6 billion be spent on prevention and treatment programs in the U.S. Although law enforcement remains the top priority under this plan, as it did under the Bush administration, drug czar Gil Kerlikowski warns that noticeable change in the drug war effort will take much progress. The level of violence in Mexico is still too high and living situations for innocent Mexican citizens in cartel territory are too dangerous to abandon. Obama’s plan emphasizes law enforcement such as border patrol agents, police, and military to combat the continuing drug war rather than treating drug consumption as a public health mandate.

Preventative measures and substance abuse treatment have time and again proven to be the most lasting and successful solution to substance abuse in statistical and medical research. Drug users are less likely to return to their habits and criminals are less likely to recidivate after receiving substance abuse treatment and counseling. However, without treatment, these individuals are most likely to relapse and return to jail, where their drug habits continue. Unless the cycle is broken, drug cartels and their violent business will continue to prosper at America’s demise.

References

http://www.knx1070.com/Mexican-President-Slams-AZ-Immigration-Law-at-Whit/7104616

http://projects.latimes.com/mexico-drug-war/#/its-a-war

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-failed-drug-war,0,1805606.story?page=1

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126890893

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/national/stories/052010dnnatassaultweapons.223cfb36.html
 

The Montelongo family has well-known ties to gang activity and criminal arrests and Anthony has collected a set of five felony charges against him after the completion of an eight-month investigation into alleged sales of drugs and firearms to undercover police officers.

Montelongo will be charged as an adult with conspiracy to distribute and manufacture a controlled substance and possession of a handgun by a juvenile; possession of a dangerous weapon; and three counts of distribution of controlled substance. If he is convicted on even one of the distribution charges, he could find himself in prison for four to 12 years.

In late March, undercover officers arranged to buy cocaine from Montelongo and on three occasions, were able to buy a total of 1 ½ ounces of cocaine for $1,410. On April 13, officers agreed to meet him to buy another ounce of cocaine during his high school lunch hour around noon. He met the officer in a downtown parking lot and was arrested on site.

Montelongo became a father weeks ago and is noted for his longtime gang ties and criminal activity in Greeley. Two brothers are in Colorado prisons; his father is set to get out of community corrections next year; and one older brother is scheduled to be off parole by December 26.

Most Montelongo family members involved with the law have faced several charges through several years involving drugs, theft, domestic violence, burglary and traffic violations.
 

Since 2006, authorities in both Mexico and the United States have seized more than 400 drug planes and in February, a man was arrested, accused of managing the Sinaloa cartel’s air operations.

Even with this crackdown, Latin American drug smugglers are finding new ways to move their goods, including using jets to ship tons of cocaine to West Africa, ultralight crafts to get product across the U.S. border and satellite-tracking devices to drop and find drug shipments.

Before President Felipe Calderón’s 3-year-old crackdown on the drug cartels began, twin-engine planes could fly directly from Colombia to staging areas in northern Mexico. Now, such long-range flights raise too much suspicion on radar.

Cocaine shipments now arrive in Guatemala and are brought into Mexico by land or boat, according to the Mexican Attorney General’s Office. Small planes then move the drugs north to avoid army checkpoints that have been placed along Mexico’s highways. Pilots now have to land in more rugged areas as the government has destroyed 2,086 unregistered airfields since 2006.

While authorities are claiming progress in the grounding of drug planes in Mexico, the cartels are using aircraft to exploit new routes. According to the U.S. State Department, drug flights between South America and the Caribbean nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic have been rising since 2006.

Smugglers are now crossing the Atlantic Ocean to move cocaine through Africa and into Europe. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration noted in an affidavit that pilots are paid $200,000 to $300, 000 per trip – making the job very lucrative.