The War on Drugs: Coming Soon to a Suburb Near You

In the last several months, members of some of Mexico’s most high-profile drug cartels have come to the city. Settling down among unsuspecting neighbors, these new residents  pretend to lead normal lives. They make routine business calls to inform their bosses about the security of their investments and their expected profit margins, but this is no stock-market game. Instead, they are supplying a large network of dealers and drug peddlers with products to distribute. Violence has skyrocketed as gangs compete for more turf in which to sell these imported drugs[FT1] . The stage for these events isn’t a border city like San Diego or El Paso, but Chicago, Illinois.

As infamous Mexican cartels gain ground way beyond the Rio Grande, the Windy City has witnessed an escalating progression of cartel-related crimes. The Chicago Crime Commission even recently branded Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, the city’s Public Enemy No. 1. Eighty years ago this designation was held by Al Capone, and now it has been given to a man who doesn’t even live in the United States. Guzmán’s new title illustrates the degree to which the drug mafias have become a presence in the United States’ criminal underworld. Jack Riley, head of the DEA’s Chicago office, went as far as to say that “It’s probably the most serious threat the United States has faced from organized crime.”

This phenomenon, which seems like the coked-up invention of a Breaking Bad [LS2] [FT3] scriptwriter, is also occurring throughout several states in the Midwest and Northeast, challenging the notion that the Drug War is confined to the southern U.S. border. A report released on April 1by the Associated Press details the cartels’ growing trend of sending their agents across the border, in order to cut out the middlemen they used to rely on, and to grow their presence in the drug market. According to the report, Mexican cartel members are now thought to operate drug distribution networks in at least nine non-border states, such as Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. And it’s not just the inner cities that are being affected. Many of those who are sent north are close enough to the cartel brass to merit being put up in middle-class suburbs with their families so they can blend in more effectively, and have a wider reach.

Naturally, many people have become alarmed by the presence of infamous criminals in cities and suburbs around America. The thought of having a mild-mannered neighbor that spends his nights overseeing illicit drug shipments is a bit disconcerting, even if you think that Bryan Cranston looks like a badass playing a meth baron. In light of this, the government has reacted by shoveling money towards law enforcement, and hoping that works out. In Chicago, city officials have set up a secret “first-of–its-kind facility” where federal agents help local law enforcement respond to the increased drug trafficking and drug-related violence. Federal agents and local police departments in several affected states are ramping up their use of traditional covert tactics like wiretapping and informant testimonies to catch and convict cartel members. The DEA and FBI have launched joint sting operations against the cartels as well.

Pundits and politicians have offered up inadequate policies to go along with these enhanced security measures. The infiltration of the cartels has been used to justify xenophobic calls for further restrictions on immigration into the U.S. Despite the Obama administrations’ reportedly liberal stance towards immigration issues, spending on immigration enforcement has only increased under his presidency, reaching nearly $18 billion last year, even as cartels continue to widen their reach to the north.

Whether or not the citizens of affected cities agree with these measures depends upon whom you ask. In any case, policymakers are only treating the symptoms of the problem instead of tackling its root cause. In typical War on Drugs fashion, the U.S. is acting as if the cartels are a Mexican problem that has spilled over to the north and just needs to be contained, without recognizing the symbiotic relationship between the Mexican drug mafias and the U.S. drug market.

The cartels gain about 60% of their revenue from trafficking in the United States. Their trade generates at least $10 billion in yearly revenues. They essentially control the U.S. market for meth, cocaine and pot, and they hold a large share of the market for heroin. Despite increased funding for border control and DEA operations, Mexican drug production—corresponding to increased U.S. drug consumption—has increased in the last ten years.

In many ways, the Americans are the ones causing the problem. Harsh anti-drug laws have done little to curb the demand for, or the availability of controlled substances. This has created an increased profit motive for the black-market economy. Widening profit margins for the cartels mean more incentives for them to expand northward, and the American and Mexican governments must then spend more money and energy going after them. The billions of U.S. dollars that end up in cartel coffers directly undermine the joint U.S.-Mexican efforts to end drug violence south of the border.

As drug mafia executives are now going about their business throughout the suburban United States, it seems pretty obvious that a drug policy based on criminalization and enforcement has failed miserably. By now it seems fair to admit that the war is definitely being won by drugs, so it might finally be time to reevaluate America’s pesky habit of making war on objects and concepts, and craft a less aggressive approach to drug policy. Many politicians and analysts are already discussing the viability of decriminalization or legalization, most commonly of marihuana, as cost-saving alternatives to the War on Drugs.

These ideas would certainly help decrease enforcement costs in the States, but they would create new problems as well. Decriminalization of marihuana, or any drug supplied by cartels, would not decrease the market share or presence of the narcos in the American drug trade. It could in fact cause an increase in illicit drug consumption and cartel revenue, since many users that would otherwise have been arrested would be able to continue buying cartel products. Full cannabis legalization would be a move in the right direction, but it would only reduce cartels’ drug revenue by roughly a fifth, since most revenue comes from trading in hard drugs like meth and heroin.

Mark Kleiman, Professor of Public Policy at UCLA, presents some creative alternatives to the Drug War dilemma. In his 2011 Foreign Affairs article, Professor Kleiman points out that the largest chunk of cartel revenue comes from the sale of hard drugs, which are mostly consumed by criminals. It makes sense then, he argues, to focus enforcement more on these users than casual soft drug consumers. In another article for Washington Monthly, Professor Kleiman cites certain programs that force convicted drug users to quit outright (instead of committing to often-ineffective treatment programs) by employing unannounced drug tests and credible threats of mild but easily enforceable punishments, such as weeklong prison stays. These measures seem to be working for several states in cutting down hard drug use and, when done right, this system of recurrent minor punishments can decrease law enforcement costs while significantly decreasing cartel revenue.

Kleiman also prioritizes security over making drug busts. He claims that by focusing most of their resources on targeting the more violent and disorderly dealers and cartels, officials on both sides of the border could minimize the social costs of the drug trade. If suppliers had an incentive to conduct business in a nonviolent manner, the human costs of the War on Drugs would be vastly diminished. American fears about drug mafias invading their territory have to do with increased violence as much as with increased drug trade. If Kleiman’s safety-first strategy were to be implemented in Chicago and other areas where the cartels have become a presence, many of the negative externalities of their business – such as gang violence and higher homicide rates – would decrease.

Even Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, has adopted such a strategy by choosing to address drug-related violence rather than the cartel leaders. After six years of destructive Mexican military campaigns against the narcos, and decades of unreceptive American drug policy, support for the War on Drugs is running out of steam in both countries. At this point, what matters is ensuring that people on both sides of the border do not have to live in fear of cartel violence ruining their lives. Peña Nieto may be laying the groundwork for a solution in Mexico in the short-term, but Americans must figure out how to decrease their domestic demand in the long run.

It falls upon the U.S. both to abandon its militaristic approach to drug policy and to consider alternatives that would eliminate the demand for a black market in the first place. Once leaders like “El Chapo” stop seeing their profits increase by putting up their cousins in Midwestern suburbs, you won’t have to worry about your neighbor cooking meth for the cartels in his basement. Unless your neighbor is a chemistry super-genius that calls himself Heisenberg.