Title: Mexico's Cartels and the Economics of Cocaine
Headings: Mexico's Cartels and the Economics of Cocaine
ON SECURITY
Mexico's Cartels and the Economics of Cocaine
The Cocaine Profit Chain
Cocaine Value Chain map
Cartel Behavior
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Content: By the time it reaches the United Kingdom, purity is 60 percent, and it drops further to about 30 percent at the retail level, according to the U.N. World Drug Report 2012. Cartel Behavior
There has been a thriving two-way flow of contraband goods across the U.S.-Mexico border since its inception. Mexican organized crime groups have been involved in the smuggling of marijuana to the U.S. market since the U.S. government began to restrict marijuana in the early 1900s, and Mexican organized criminals profited handsomely during the Prohibition era in the United States. As U.S. demand for illicit drugs increased in the second half of the 20th century, Mexican organizations branched out to become involved in smuggling other types of drugs, including pharmaceuticals and black tar heroin; poppy cultivation was also introduced to Mexico in the 1930s. These Mexican organized crime syndicates, such as the Guadalajara cartel , also began to traffic cocaine into the United States in the late 1970s, but for many years the Mexican organizations worked as junior partners for the powerful Colombian cartels in Medellin and Cali. Mexico was a secondary route for cocaine compared to the primary route through the Caribbean. As a result, the Colombians pocketed the lion's share of the profit made on cocaine trafficked through Mexico and the Mexicans received a fee on each kilogram they transported. ( However, they did not assume any of the risk of losing shipments between South America and Mexico.) In the late 1970s and the 1980s — the early phase of Mexican involvement in the cocaine trade — Central American middlemen such as Juan Matta-Ballesteros were also heavily involved in the flow of cocaine through Mexico.