The Americas
Americas view
The drug trade in North America
Ecstatic traffickers
May 23rd 2011, 21:45 by M.D. | OTTAWA
THE ever-increasing body count in Mexico’s drug war has focused Americans’ attention on the gangs south of the border. When it comes to shipments of ecstasy, however, they are looking in the wrong direction. Because the drug is a synthetic compound that can be manufactured anywhere, Latin America’s warm climate does not provide the same advantage that it does for cocaine or opiates. Instead, it is Canada that has an edge, because its large population of Asian immigrants gives its organised-crime groups easy access to Chinese suppliers of ecstasy’s precursor chemicals. In the year to October 2010 American customs officers seized 1,460 pounds (662 kg) of ecstasy at the northern border, and just 24 pounds at the southern one.
Stemming the flow of ecstasy—which sells for two to three times more in the United States than in Canada—along an 8,891-km (5,525-mile) border has proven to be extremely difficult. The frontier, long called the world’s longest undefended border—although it has recently been rechristened as unmilitarised—runs through vast tracks of wilderness, over mountains, through the middle of the Great Lakes, and down the main streets of some small towns. Moreover, because Canada and America are each other’s biggest trading partner, a balance must be found between securing the border and impeding the 35m vehicles that cross each year.
The United States beefed up its border controls after the September 11th attacks. Although its measures were principally aimed at fighting terrorism, they have made life more difficult for traffickers as well. It increased the number of customs agents along the Canadian frontier from 300 to 2200 and brought in new technology, including Predator drones and surveillance balloons in the air, and thermal imaging cameras and remote video-surveillance systems on the ground. It has also sought greater cross-border cooperation: Canada recently agreed to give the United States 22 additional radar feeds to help detect smugglers crossing over on low-altitude flights. Alan Bersin, the commissioner of America’s Customs and Border Protection agency, told a Congressional committee on May 17th that information-sharing with Canada had increased significantly. It is likely to improve further under the agreement signed in February by Barack Obama and Stephen Harper, Canada’s prime minister, to explore deeper continental security ties, and as a result of a law passed in January requiring America’s government to produce a “Northern Border Counternarcotics Strategy”.
Yet while the United States may be clamping down at the 122 land border crossings with Canada, patrolling the gaps between them remains difficult. Traffickers in Quebec ride snowmobiles in winter and all-terrain vehicles in summer, while those in British Columbia make use of helicopters and boats. Indian reservations that straddle the border, allowing residents to pass freely into either country, are particularly porous: American authorities estimate that 20% of all high-potency marijuana smuggled from Canada passes through New York’s St. Regis Mohawk Reservation, which is known as the Akwesasne Reserve on the Canadian side. The more America tries to crack down, the more ingenious the smugglers become.
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End drug prohibition.
2nd paragraph, 2nd sentence, "tracks" should be "tracts".
Wait, we have tried this before. Is it working?
Harmless drug being shipped over a harmless border.
I guess some joyless poster will make a comment on the dangers of ecstasy based on a dimly remembered news report of how some brainless, vacuous teen once danced herself to death on MDMA (and 10 litres of H2O). Well my purported-poster how many people have you actually known who have died in accidents due to alcohol/been in violent confrontations due to alcohol/are currently or deceased alcoholics?
An costly 'solution' to a non-problem.
@2.4.6.8.goshort!
Safrole oil is an important chemical precurosor to MDMA. Most safrole is harvested from the oil rich mreas prov phnom trees, where the oil is infinitely more easily obtained from stills than from North American trees. These critically endangered and poorly understood trees are cut down, and then the surrounding trees are cut down for wood to heat distillation stills. The excess chemical waste poisons the ground for years and the carcinogenic properties of the safrole oil itself wreak havoc on the workers themselves.
I am all for legalization, but I wrote this because your comment ticked me off. A typical Economist reader should examine a story from all points. Anything else is pure laziness.
Why is ecstacy 3x as costly in Canada as the US? The Asians?! That seems like lazy reporting...
Indian reservations are a huge part of organized crime in Canada.
@St. Telio,
Should I have considered the negative environmental effects of MDMA production? Fine: but sugar is an important ingredient in alcohol manufacture, and a great deal of sugar comes from plantations built on deforested areas (don't get me started on beef and palm oil).
I trust you are right in saying Safrole oil production is toxic. But so is the production of synthetic drugs and even many medicines. Prohibition makes it worse by pushing production into unregulated places where workers and the environment have no protection.
I do not understand the rationale for your criticism. My point is that most individuals underestimate the direct negative effect alcohol has on them and those around them, and lump drugs like ecstasy into the same illegal-drugs basket as crack or methamphetamines (which are awful). I've never seen someone with beer-tits try to start a bar fight on MDMA.
I think it is an open secret that Canada is a large producer of marijuana and extasy, and I think it is often an open secret that Canadian law enforcement could be better when it comes to organized crimes that produces minimal mess on the streets (out of sight, out of mind). However, I think that the strategy of focusing on smuggling is a very bad one.
What US and Canada should be doing is improve collaboration between their anti-gang agencies and go for the source. Canada is not nearly as disfunctional as Mexico to try and enforce the border. I actually believe that this is the direction Harper is taking.
Besides, some decriminalization won't hurt. Canada seems to be doing much better than US in vice department with legalized prostitution and all that.
lets all go to Canada and roll balls
if you take the game of life seriously, if take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, stop using drugs.
How strange that "The Economist" magazine totally overlooked the main reason why such measures will never work: economics.
There is, empirically, a huge demand for ecstasy (and other drugs) in the US. This is irrespective of laws which purport to prohibit it. Insofar as they are effective, measures such as heightened border security which reduce the supply will merely make ecstasy more scarce and therefore more expensive. Thus, it will simply become that much more lucrative to smugglers and producers, who will be able to make larger profit margins.
Penalties for trafficking are already quite severe, so the smugglers apparently don't care about that risk; instead, prices have risen to compensate for it. A pill that costs a few pennies to make retails for several thousand times that price.
Exhibit A: the heightened border security along the Mexican border has not substantially altered drug demand in the US, nor drug smuggling into the US. It has merely provided organized cartels with the capital they needed to start to bribe US border guards and to upgrade their weaponry to military level, so they are even now capable of plausibly challenging the federal government for control of large swaths of the country.
Prohibition only drives up prices and funds dangerously violent gangs and cartels; it has never and will never kill off the demand in society. At some stage, we as a society need to recognize that the prohibition of drugs that many people want is totally ineffective, just as we once did with alcohol. It's been tried for many decades, it doesn't work, and there is a sound economic explanation for why it doesn't work. "The Economist," of all places, should be taking the lead in pointing this out.
There is a need to address the buyers’ market. Legalise most drugs, increase the penalties of selling AND using them, tax the now legal ones and use the money to cover the costs of increased enforcement, imprisonment and rehabilitation.
As seen from Canada.
1. We have a well-educated workforce that's as good as any when it comes to chemistry, R&D, biotech, distribution, and customer satisfaction.
2. We live by neighbours who are frequently drug-addled dumdums.
Put the two together, and it's only natural that we grow (BC Bud Maryjane) or synthesize (ecssssstasssssy) world-beating products.
Isn't is interesting that for 144 years (1793-1937) Marijuana was legal in the US ( as were most drugs) and the country managed to survive without everyone becoming an addict? I don't recall much of American Literature being devoted to the "drug problem."
Why is it only in the past 73 years that the citizens couldn't be trusted to not become dope fiends if it were available?
You want a viable solution to curtailing drug trafficking? Legalise &/or decriminalise drugs, period & end the drug war fiasco, once & for all. Nothing else will ever work.
But do the authorities really want this?? Sure looks to me like they don't. The all-powerful drug cartels & their greedy minions won't let this happen. And so the mind games will continue unabated..
Maybe it is time for a new approach towards drugs; however there are unfortunately far too many government employees making a living out of the fight against drugs. The vested interests that can be found within the ministry of justice, police, and aid workers will make sure they will keep their job. Seen from that perspective there is no real difference between the smugglers and the drugs fighters. The war against alcohol was lost quite a while ago. There is no reason to assume that the fight against drugs will be won either.
Legalise it!
And regulate!