The “War on Drugs” is destroying Oregon families, but not in the way you might think. Drug cartels are using Oregon’s deep Latino roots to profit from illegal cocaine and methamphetamine smuggling and production operations. While the drugs themselves take their toll on our society, the unregulated drug trade itself spurs violent, drug-related crimes, lures low-income people with the promise of fast cash, and divides tens of thousands of families in Oregon each year. It is time to look for alternatives to the War on Drugs.
The Mexican Connection
When law enforcement officials began noticing signs that cartels were making inroads in Oregon in the last decade, it was already too late. Drug raids began turning up record-breaking volumes of contraband, signaling closer ties to cartels and their suppliers. In 2005, wiretap investigations captured traffickers in Oregon talking to bosses in Mexico or to Mexican drug suppliers working under the umbrella of cartels. Mexican traffickers began setting up major marijuana grow-houses and meth labs in Oregon's rural areas to circumvent increased border security. Today, at least 69 drug trafficking organizations operate in the state. Their reach has extended throughout the Northwest, controlling nearly every ounce of heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine flowing into the region.
Investigators say traffickers are exploiting Oregon's close ties to Mexico, often following family and friends who've moved here. Mexicans have streamed to Oregon for agriculture jobs for generations. The state also has a longstanding and rapidly growing Latino population. The 2010 Census counted more than 450,000 Latino residents — nearly 12 percent of the state population, up from 8 percent in 2000. The vast majority, 88 percent, trace their roots to Mexico.
Mutually Assured Destruction
The toll that methamphetamine took on peoples' lives in both the Northwest and Midwest nearly rivals that of cocaine in the inner cities during the 1980s. The Department of Health and Human Services Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS) reported an increase of over 100 percent in methamphetamine use in both Portland and Seattle, as well as a 200 percent increase in Minneapolis. DEA meth seizures would nearly triple from 1994-2007. The price dropped below that of cocaine, the purity tripled, and meth became the most profitable drug for the Mexican cartels. In 2005, the National Drug Intelligence Center labeled meth as “the primary drug threat to the Pacific Region.”
At the same time, after a crackdown by U.S. and Mexican authorities as part of tightened border security in the wake of the September 11 attacks, border violence in Mexico surged. In 2011, a reported 12,358 drug-related murders occurred in Mexico. The Mexican government estimates that 90% of all killings within its borders are drug-related. Honduras, through which an estimated 79% of cocaine passes on its way to the United States, has the highest murder rate in the world.
Cocaine is the second most popular illegal recreational drug in the United States behind marijuana, and the U.S. consumes half of the world’s cocaine supply.
This violence makes its way across the border: police suspect a cartel is behind a roadside execution of a trafficker near Salem in 2012. They think cartel operatives shot two California drug dealers whose bodies were found buried in the sage northeast of Klamath Falls in the fall of 2011. They also believe a cartel ordered a 2007 hit in which a trafficker and four friends were lined up on the floor of a Vancouver rental home and shot in the head.
These “gangland”-style shootings are shocking reminders of the price we pay for illegal drugs, but, surprisingly, overall statewide numbers for everything from property crime, robbery, and assault all decreased from 1994-2007. This challenges one of the central tenets of the War on Drugs: that the use of the drugs causes violent behavior and increased crime. In fact, it is the competition of an unregulated market that encourages the majority of violent crime, not the drugs themselves.
Drug use in Mexico is a reported 2 percent, whereas use amongst its American neighbors hovers around 8 percent. Despite this difference, violence in Mexico is at an all-time high. The market and the crime surrounding the trade may have declined in the U.S., but the death toll has only increased South of the border ever since that region inherited the title of lead cocaine importer — someone always pays. Currently valued at over $3 billion annually, the Mexican cocaine market shows no signs of slowing, and as long as such a high-valued market exists, violence will follow, even into Oregon.
A Costly War
America's appetite for drugs is voracious, and its total drug consumption remains the largest in the world. The U.S. federal government spent over $15 billion in 2010 on the War on Drugs, a rate of about $500 per second. Drug arrests have quadrupled over the last 40 years and more than four-fifths of those are for possession. That number continues to climb while the number of arrests for sale and manufacturing peaked in 1995. When limiting the focus to minority populations, the numbers are even more drastic.
Unsurprisingly, the United States has the highest documented incarceration rate and total prison population in the world. Nearly 15,000 Oregonians are in prison today: this has resulted in the creation of an underclass of people who have few educational or job opportunities, often as a result of being punished for drug offenses which in turn have resulted from attempts to earn a living in spite of having no education or job opportunities. The present policy of trying to prohibit the use of drugs through the use of criminal law is a mistake, and some states, including Oregon, California, Colorado, and Washington are beginning to change.
The War on Drugs has failed in America, where millions of families have been destroyed by the inept incarceration system — and it has failed all over the world, where armed conflicts for control of the black market devastate entire countries. Oregon has some of the deepest ties to Mexico: Oregonians must fight to end the criminalization of drug use, to find legal models that undermine organized crime syndicates, to stop the violence at home and abroad, and continue to offer health and treatment services for drug-users in need. The future of our nations and our children must be our priority.
Resources:
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/crime/article/Drug-cartels-reach-extends-to-Pacific-Northwest-4616344.php
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2013/06/drug_cartels_in_oregon_history.html