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Vast US Illegal Drug Market Fuels Mexican Cartels

Americans' unsurpassed demand for illegal drugs fuels
expansion drive by Mexican cartels

By DAVID CRARY AP National Writer
NEW YORK May 26, 2009 (AP)


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 damage done by our insatiable demand for drugs is truly astounding," said Lloyd Johnston, a University of Michigan researcher who oversees annual drug-use surveys.

The latest federal figures show that 114 million Americans have used illegal drugs at some point - and 20 million are current users.

Marijuana is by far the No. 1 drug, sampled by 100 million Americans, including nearly half of high school seniors. But more than 35 million Americans have used cocaine at some point and 34 million have taken LSD or other hallucinogens.

"It's a drug dealer's dream - sell it in a place where he can make the most money for the risk taken," said Dr. H. Westley Clark, director of the federal Center for Substance Abuse Treatment.

"There's a tremendous amount of denial until you're face to face with it," Clark added. "A substance abuser can be anybody. Everybody is at risk."

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.

Gil Kerlikowske, a former Seattle police chief recently appointed by President Barack Obama as the U.S. drug czar, said the Mexicans "make an excellent point."

"Our drug abuse causes problems elsewhere - our per capita consumption is very high," said Kerlikowske, who argues that reducing demand through education and treatment is as vital as border interdictions in quelling Mexico's drug violence.

Country of origin didn't matter much to David Hart.

Now 49, Hart said he started using drugs at 14 and didn't stop until he entered a one-year recovery program in January at the Springs Rescue Mission in Colorado Springs, Colo.

The son of an alcoholic father, Hart moved from Arizona to Colorado in 1993. A promised construction job didn't materialize, and since then he's mixed part-time work with stints of homelessness, panhandling to pay for hits of crack, marijuana and speed.

"When you're depressed about your lot in life, and angry about the way you've been treated, drugs are a perfect way out. You smoke that crack and your problems just go away. You know they're going to come back, but for that brief moment you don't have to deal with it."

He's grateful to his supporters at the recovery program, but unsure what lies ahead.

"It's been a part of my life for so long," he said. "It's going to be a challenge for the rest of my life to stay clean."

Yet Hart is, in some respects, lucky. Federal figures indicate that roughly 7.5 million Americans needed treatment for illegal drug abuse in 2007, and only about 1.3 million received it.

The Rescue Mission's CEO, the Rev. Joe Vazquez, said Hart is part of a wave of drug-abusing transients who've settled into the netherworld of an outwardly prosperous region.

"There's this whole segment of our community living well below what their creator created them for - these men coming with a toolbelt and backpack, living in little rundown motels, struggling with addiction," Vazquez said.



This picture taken May 18, 2009, provided by Vincent James Petti III, shows David Hart posing outside the Springs Rescue Mission, a charity whose programs include substance-abuse counseling for drug-addicted homeless men. Hart, 49, said he had been abusing drugs since he was 14, but hopes treatment he started in January at the rescue mission will help him break the addiction. (AP Photo/Courtesy Vincent James Petti III)



This picture taken Jan. 24 2009, provided by Vincent James Petti III, shows David Hart, foreground, in an alley in Colorado Springs, Colo., where he was spending time with other homeless men. Hart, who says he had been abusing drugs since he was 14, is now in a treatment program run by the Springs Rescue Mission in Colorado Springs. (AP Photo/ Courtesy Vincent James Petti III)


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