MEXICAN DRUGS: DON'T BLAME FREE TRADE FOR THEIR INCREASE IN TEXAS

Is free trade with Mexico causing increased drug trafficking in Texas?

That's what some Texas and U.S. drug enforcement officials think. They
blame increased truck traffic from Mexico under the North American Free
Trade Agreement for the surge in cross-border flows of heroin, cocaine and
marijuana.

Assume for a moment that what the officials say is true. The natural remedy
would be to repeal the agreement. No free trade, no problem. Right?

Wrong. Mexican drug trafficking is more complicated than that.

Everyone wants a panacea. But repealing North American free trade would
not be one.

Suppose that the United States and Mexico returned to the status quo
before the free-trade agreement took effect in 1994. Would that reduce high
U.S. demand for drugs? No.

Would it significantly reduce imports of legal Mexican goods, which were
rising even before the advent of free trade and which traffickers use to
piggyback their illicit wares into the United States? No.

Would it stop Mexican trucks from crossing the border. Again, no.

Mexican traffickers would still apply their ingenuity to getting drugs in.
U.S. customs agents would still have their hands full trying to keep drugs
out.

The officials are right about one thing: Mexican drug trafficking is up in
Texas. But free trade is only one factor. U.S. demand is another. So is the
crackdown on drug trafficking in Florida, which has forced Colombian
traffickers to seek new infiltration routes.

The solution to the problem of Mexican drug trafficking has never been to
seal the border or to hamper legitimate trade. It is to take aggressive yet
reasonable steps to ensure that Mexican trucks carry no drugs.

In this, the United States is still not doing its best. It only recently
began to use X-rays to peer into Mexican trucks. And it has not created
"inland ports of preclearance," where customs agents from both countries
could inspect cargoes, seal containers and demand detailed travel
itineraries. Trucks that arrived at their destinations late or with broken
container seals would be reinspected.

Mexican drugs were a problem before free trade; they would remain so even
if the United States were so foolish as to scuttle it.