NEW YORK
The Mexican drug cartels battling viciously to expand and survive have a powerful financial incentive: To the north is a market for illegal drugs unsurpassed for its wealth, diversity and voraciousness.
In all, 46 percent of Americans 12 and older have indulged in illicit drug use.
This array of consumers is providing a vast, recession-proof, apparently unending market for the Mexican gangs locked in a drug war that has killed more than 10,780 people since December 2006. No matter how much law enforcement or financial help the U.S. government provides Mexico, the basics of supply and demand prevent it from doing much good.
"The damage done by our insatiable demand for drugs is truly astounding," said Lloyd Johnston, a researcher at the University of Michigan who oversees annual drug-use surveys.
The latest federal figures show that 114 million Americans have used illegal drugs at some point -- and 20 million are current users. "It's a drug dealer's dream -- sell it in a place where he can make the most money for the risk taken," said Dr. H. Westley Clark, the director of the federal Center for Substance Abuse Treatment.
The Mexican cartels are eager to feed this ravenous appetite. Once used mostly to transship drugs from South America, Mexico is now a major producer and distributor; its gangs control cocaine networks in many U.S. cities and covertly grow marijuana on U.S. public lands.
For now, the Mexican government is fighting the cartels and working with U.S. authorities to stop the southbound flow of weapons, but all parties are aware of the role played by the U.S. market.
"When the U.S. government turns up the pressure a lot, then is when you see a return to the old formula of saying (to Americans), ‘You also have corruption, you consume the drugs, you're the biggest drug consumer in the world,'" said Jose Luis Pineyro, a sociologist at Mexico's Autonomous Metropolitan University.
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