THE DOPE

A decadeslong survey of the Mexican drug trade and the myths surrounding it.

The pipelines that bring illicit narcotics from Mexico have been flowing since the late 19th century, writes historian Smith, a time when “between 2 and 4 percent of the U.S. population was addicted to morphine.” A century later, “America was consuming up to 70 percent of all the world’s cocaine.” Some of the myths that have arisen paint the drug trade as an evil assault on an innocent America, perpetuated by the worst of humankind against a cadre of honest cops, a tide that provides “the essential background for the upsurge in U.S. nativism, the expansion of a massive deportation industry, and the popularity of Trump’s demands for a wall.” The truth is more nuanced, but it centers on economics. Without the ever voracious American market, there would be no drug trade—and the current trend toward legalizing at least marijuana and the decline in cocaine consumption are forcing the trade into new product lines, including fentanyl, methamphetamine, and opioids. Meanwhile, writes Smith, the drug trade was long intertwined with the Mexican state; since almost all of the traffic passed through to the north, who would object to politicians skimming off the top? But the politicians have given way to the drug traffickers themselves, who now “decide the rules of the game,” which Smith describes as “state capture.” With a few exceptions (such the Sinaloa cartel kingpin Chapo Guzmán), the bosses escape punishment even as the trade has turned increasingly violent. Smith does a fine job of piecing all these elements together, showing how the American market led to the boom of border towns such as the once-sleepy hamlet of Tijuana and how hard-line anti-drug policies do not bring down consumption rates. Meanwhile, the tens of thousands of dead and disappeared in Mexico, collateral damage of the drug war, can be laid at the door of the U.S.—where, as Smith notes, the guns that the gangsters employ come from.

A well-researched, sobering view of the damage that Americans’ need to get high wreaks on our neighbors.