Mexico City – Mexican drug cartels operate in almost every region of the U.S. and bring in as much as $23 billion a year in revenue, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Thursday.
U.S. assistance has helped Mexico combat cartels, the report says, but those efforts have been hampered by Mexican government corruption and by the failure of key players in the U.S., including the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, to coordinate better with Mexican law enforcement.
The White House drug policy office, the report says, has prepared a counternarcotics plan but has not discussed portions of the initiative that require Mexican cooperation with authorities in Mexico.
“The Office of National Drug Control Policy has to stop dropping the ball and doing sloppy work,” Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who requested the report, said in an e-mail Wednesday. “They had plenty of time to forge a working relationship with the Mexican government, but it appears that nothing has been accomplished.”
Patrick Ward, assistant deputy director of the White House drug office, said his office has had extensive contact with Mexican authorities about counternarcotics plans since the GAO conducted its probe.
The report is the starkest evidence yet of Mexico’s emergence as the main conduit of illegal drugs into the U.S. The share of cocaine arriving in the U.S. through Mexico, for instance, leapt from 66 percent in 2000 to 90 percent in 2005. Other transshipment points include Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Central America.
Combined, Mexican drug cartels generate more revenue than 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies, and the U.S. government’s highest estimate of cartel revenue tops that of Merck, Deere and Halliburton.
The report paints a troubling picture of bureaucratic tangles that impede drug-control efforts: Operation Halcon, a successful, helicopter-based border surveillance program, was canceled in November because the U.S. and Mexico could not resolve accident-liability issues. Failure to reach an accord allowing U.S. law enforcement officers to board suspicious Mexican-flagged ships has allowed drug traffickers to evade capture by dumping their loads at sea.
Despite the disturbing trend lines, GAO investigators also saw positive signs. They praised Mexico for extraditing a record number of drug suspects to the U.S. in 2006 and said President Felipe Calderon has demonstrated “a new level of commitment to combating drug traffickers.”
