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Operation Condor: Mexico's Antidrug Campaign Enters a New Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Richard Craig
Richard Craig*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio
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Extract

In recent years Mexico has demonstrated the capacity to cultivate, process, ship, and transship vast quantities of illegal narcotic drugs. Such activity has traditionally been geared to the realities of domestic poverty, enormous profit, and American demand. Mexican marijuana dominated the U.S. market until quite recently. More importantly from the American viewpoint were the tons of Mexican heroin which saturated U.S. cities in the mid-1970s. Furthermore, Mexico is still the source of vast quantities of psychotropics and an increasingly popular conduit for South American cocaine.

According to Craig (1978), U.S. officials long sought to convince their Mexican counterparts that the key to any effective antidrug program lay in eliminating the illicit product at the source. Until such time that herbicides were applied on a massive scale against marijuana and opium poppies, they argued, the annual Mexican campaign would prove an exercise in futility.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , August 1980 , pp. 345 - 363
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1980

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