Mexican drug smugglers pose top crime threat

[December 16, 2008]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- Mexican drug traffickers who pair up with gangs and use a sophisticated network to smuggle drugs across the border have become the biggest organized crime threat to the United States, the Justice Department reported Monday.

Most of the cocaine available in the U.S. is brought across the southwest border by Mexican groups, according to the annual report by the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center.

Additionally, Mexican drug smugglers are increasingly working with Italian Mafia and other traditional organized crime groups nationwide, the report says.

"Mexican drug trafficking organizations represent the greatest organized crime threat to the United States," the report concluded. "The influence of Mexican drug trafficking organizations over domestic drug trafficking is unrivaled."

The Mexican groups "control drug distribution in most U.S. cities, and they are gaining strength in markets that they do not yet control," the report found.

The groups supplied drugs to at least 230 cities between January 2006 and April 2008.

Cocaine remains the top concern for U.S. drug officials, even though the amount smuggled into the country through the southwest border has dipped dramatically.

During the last three months of 2005, the amount of cocaine illegally brought in through California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas peaked at nearly 3,500 kilograms. That weight had dropped by half -- to about 1,700 kilograms of cocaine -- between April and June of 2008, the most recent data available.

The Justice Department report attributed the decline to a number of factors, including crackdowns on Mexican cartels and large cocaine shipments; efforts to eliminate coca crops; better U.S. border security; and an increased cocaine market in Europe.

Nationally, federal agents seized just under 10,000 kilos of cocaine earlier this year, way down from a high of 20,000 kilos seized in early 2004.

U.S. officials also continue to be concerned about illegal methamphetamine use, although import restrictions stunted the meth flow from Mexico in 2007 and 2008, the report found. However, meth labs in the United States helped stabilize the drug's domestic market, and may have helped it grow.

Yearly, organized Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers make and launder between $18 billion and $39 billion in wholesale drug profits.

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On the Net:

National Drug Intelligence Center: http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/index.htm

[Associated Press]

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