Drug Trafficking

Insight – Organized Crime in America (Part II of III)

Heroin

Like cocaine, heroin is derived from a plant, in this case what is known as the opium poppy. The opiate from the plant is the source for morphine, codeine and heroin, among others. The plant grows in high altitude, mountainous areas. Organized criminal groups have been deeply involved in the trade of the opium and its derivatives for at least two centuries. The highly addictive nature of the drugs, and the relative ease with which the criminal groups can move the drugs, make it a lucrative venture. Like cocaine, heroin revenue, which the UN estimates to be $55 billion yearly, also finances insurgencies worldwide.

This helps explain why 85 percent of the world’s heroin comes from Afghanistan. It supplies the world’s largest consumer markets, Western Europe and Russia. Nonetheless, there is a sizeable heroin market in the U.S., an estimated 20 metric tons a year, according to the UN. The supply comes principally from poppy fields in Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia. Mexico, in particular, has seen poppy production rise dramatically in recent years.

The United States Government estimates that cultivation of opium poppy, the raw material for heroin, rose from 6,000 hectares to 15,000 hectares between from 2008 to 2009, making it the third largest producer of poppy in the world behind Afghanistan and Myanmar. Part of this rise may be due to a decrease in availability on the Colombian side and an increased vertical integration on the Mexican side. The USG estimates that poppy cultivation in Colombia dropped by as much as 50 percent between 2000 and 2006, and has remained steady ever since.

Indeed, there are indications that Guatemala has overtaken Colombia as the second largest poppy producer in the region. Part of this may be due to Mexican cartels’ attempts to use the fertile area in the San Marcos region, along the Mexican border, as a new headquarter for poppy cultivation and processing into heroin.

Heroin is a highly profitable business as organized criminal gangs take advantage of sparsely populated areas and corruptible officials in Mexico, and their proximity to the U.S. market. Mexican organizations, such as the Sinaloa Cartel, have established numerous heroin processing labs near the largest areas of production, namely the Western Sierra mountains in the Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua states. Often referred to as the “Golden Triangle,” these three states have upwards of 80 percent of the poppy production in the hemisphere. They move these drugs in the same corridors as the cocaine traffic: via commercial trucks, private vehicles and human mules through man-made tunnels under the U.S.-Mexican border.

In the U.S., these organizations have established distribution networks in the major cities and often reaching into the countryside. These networks include mini-distribution teams in Los Angeles, Chicago and other major distribution centers. The heroin often passes through Houston and Los Angeles on its way to the other major distribution centers. Money for the drugs then goes back through those main hubs, then is smuggled back into Mexico where it is laundered in legitimate businesses and the black market.

Methamphetamines

The synthetic drug industry in the Americas is relatively new but growing exponentially. What was once a U.S.-based operation that relied on local precursors and “shake and bake” laboratories, has become a sophisticated international business that includes securing supplies from as far away as Asia, developing the methamphetamines in large, elaborate labs in Mexico and Central America, and transporting the drugs across the U.S. border via tunnels, or using commercial vehicles or human mules. Indeed, authorities in the United States now believe that Mexico supplies 70 percent of the methamphetamines consumed in the United States.

The transfer of the methamphetamine industry from the U.S. to Mesoamerica owes much to better U.S. law enforcement and new laws that regulate the importation and sale of the drug’s precursors, ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, ingredients common in cough medicines and other over-the-counter drugs. These new laws have made it more difficult to import and move the precursors for the drugs.

The meth traffickers in the U.S. have adapted, creating small scale, “one-pot” labs. But the Mexican cartels have created “super-labs” – giant meth factories that produce huge quantities of the drug. The largest labs are in the Mexican states of Jalisco and Michoacán, but Mexican authorities have also raided large labs in other states, like Durango and Sinaloa. The Mexican traffickers have also circumvented the laws limiting the availability of the ephedrine and pseudoephedrine by using alternative precursors, such as phenyl-2-propanone, much of it smuggled in from Asia.

Still, most of the drugs are made using the ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. Up until two years ago, Mexico’s Central American neighbors, principally Guatemala and Honduras, were supplying the raw material for the meth production. These two countries, as well as Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Belize, Perú and Argentina, have since enacted laws limiting imports of the precursors.

But the traffickers are finding new ways to get them to the mega-labs in Mexico and the smaller labs in Central and South America. The routes often mirror those of the illegal drugs leaving the region. The principal supplier of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine is India. Its precursors mostly go directly to Mexico. But some pass through Central America. And other go through East Africa, then Central America, often on their way to Mexico’s super-labs.