Opinion: We Can Target All the Drug Kingpins in Mexico We Want, but That's a Losing Strategy

By Christopher Landau at AZ Central

Note to readers: Christopher Landau served as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico from 2019 to 2021.

Opinion: If we want to stop the flow of illegal, increasingly deadly drugs into the U.S, we can't rely on Mexico to do the hard work for us.

While the migration crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border has monopolized recent headlines, another crisis has been unfolding along the same border: the flow of illegal and increasingly deadly drugs into the United States.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a grim statistic in December that passed largely unnoticed amid the pandemic: the United States registered more than 81,000 drug overdose deaths in the 12 months ending in May 2020, the highest number of overdose deaths ever recorded in a 12-month period.

Interim reports suggest that the problem has only intensified over the ensuing pandemic year.

Most of these illegal drugs enter our country over the southern border with Mexico, transported by or at the behest of powerful criminal organizations based there. As the most recent U.S. ambassador to Mexico, a critical part of my job was urging the Mexican government to take a more proactive stance to interdict the flow of illegal drugs and hold accountable those responsible for it.

And so it should. But the main lesson I drew from countless interactions with both Mexican and American officials is that the United States cannot depend on Mexico, or any other foreign country, to solve our drug problem.

Catching kingpins relies on Mexico to act

Unfortunately, our main counternarcotics agencies, particularly the Drug Enforcement Administration, remain trapped in an Eliot Ness mindset: the main goal is to catch the bad guys and bring them to justice. While that objective is obviously laudable, it cannot be the basis of our national counternarcotics strategy. There are two problems with the approach, one practical and one conceptual.

The practical problem is that most of the cartel kingpins live in Mexico, so their apprehension and prosecution necessarily depend on the actions of the Mexican government.

For better or worse, the current Mexican government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is firmly convinced that a “militarized” approach to dealing with the cartels would be not only ineffective but counterproductive.

In any event, it is far from clear that Mexico’s law enforcement and judicial institutions are up to the task. The botched attempt to arrest Ovidio Guzmán, son of convicted kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, in October 2019 underscores the challenge.

That won't affect the illegal drug supply

At a deeper level, catching and trying drug kingpins will not significantly affect the supply of illegal drugs. “If you cut the head off the snake, five will grow back” is a line I often heard in Mexico, and amply supported by experience.

Most of these organizations have lieutenants willing to take the leader’s place, and a leadership vacuum often leads to violent internal jockeying for dominance. Even if a particular organization is temporarily or permanently disrupted, there are always plenty of others ready to take up the slack.

None of this is to suggest that the United States and Mexico should not work together to apprehend key figures in the illegal drug trade and bring them to justice. The cartels pose a grave danger to both countries, and we share a common interest in eradicating them.

During my tenure as ambassador, we were able to break a logjam in extraditions and, until the pandemic, were on pace to break records. Cartel leaders should not be able to live and work with impunity.

But the United States cannot outsource its counternarcotics strategy to Mexico. Any strategy that defines success by reference to another country’s efforts is doomed to failure. The United States must have control over implementing its own strategy, which requires a renewed focus on efforts within its own borders.

We must focus on education in the US

These efforts begin with education and prevention programs, particularly in American schools.

Unfortunately, conventional wisdom now tends to dismiss such programs as categorically ineffective, mocking Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” efforts of the 1980s. But if past or existing programs are deemed ineffective, the answer is to improve – not jettison – them. There is ultimately no way to solve the drug problem without addressing the demand side of the equation.

We do not stop teaching math or English whenever questions are raised about student performance in these areas.

Especially in an era when many states have fully or partially decriminalized marijuana use, and the market is flooded with synthetic opioids like fentanyl and methamphetamine that can kill even in infinitesimally small amounts, governments and school boards across the country must focus on developing and implementing updated drug awareness programs.

And target the flow of money and weapons

In addition, the United States must bolster law enforcement efforts on its side of the border.

Drugs smuggled across the border from Mexico do not magically disperse themselves throughout the country; rather, they are trafficked by criminal groups operating on American soil. If the United States, with its relatively robust criminal justice system, has proven unable to eradicate or even substantially contain these trafficking activities within its own borders, how can it realistically expect Mexico to do so within theirs?

United States law enforcement also must attack the American roots of the Mexican cartels’ power: money and weapons. The cartels are in business for profit, and the United States can put them out of business by keeping illegal drug proceeds emanating from this country from reaching cartel pockets in Mexico.

Similarly, the United States – in particular, the Department of Justice – can and must redouble enforcement of its export-control laws to stanch the torrent of firearms and ammunition flowing across the border to the Mexican cartels.

There is a natural human tendency to shift the blame for a problem, and the responsibility for its solution, to someone else.

For far too long, American policymakers have looked to Mexico as the source of the problem and the cure (and vice versa). This has led only to a cycle of mutual recriminations.

With hundreds of Americans overdosing every day, the United States cannot afford to put the fate of its counternarcotics strategy in foreign hands.