Drug Control

Mexico continues to be the primary transit route for cocaine entering the United States from South America, as well as a major source country for heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamines. Moreover, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, drug-trafficking organizations are increasing their activities, posing a threat to citizens in the United States and Mexico. Although Mexico, with U.S. assistance, has taken steps to improve its ability to reduce the flow of illegal drugs into the United States, these efforts are in the early stages of implementation and some are limited in scope. For example, no Mexican national has actually been surrendered to the United States on drug charges, some new laws have not been fully implemented, and developing competent law enforcement and judicial institutions has been a challenge. Also, the Mexican government faces a shortage of trained personnel, a lack of adequate funding to support operations, and extensive corruption. At the same time, key elements of the Defense Department's counternarcotics assistance to Mexico were of limited usefulness or could have been better planned and coordinated by U.S. and Mexican officials.

GAO noted that: (1) Mexico continues to be the primary transit country for cocaine entering the United States from South America, as well as a major source country for heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamines; (2) according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, drug-trafficking organizations are increasing their activities, posing a threat to citizens in the United States and Mexico; (3) Mexico, with U.S. assistance, has taken steps to improve its capacity to reduce the flow of illegal drugs into the United States by: (a) increasing the eradication of marijuana and opium poppy and seizing significant amounts of cocaine; (b) enhancing its counternarcotics cooperation with the United States; (c) initiating efforts to extradite Mexican criminals to the United States; (d) passing new laws on organized crime, money laundering, and chemical control; and (e) instituting reforms in law enforcement agencies and expanding the role of the military in counternarcotics activities to reduce corruption; (4) the results of these actions have yet to be realized because many of them are in the early stages of implementation and some are limited in scope; (5) also, the Mexican government faces a shortage of trained personnel, a lack of adequate funding to support operations, and extensive corruption; (6) U.S. counternarcotics assistance has enhanced the ability of the Mexican military to conduct counternarcotics missions by allowing it to perform reconnaissance, increase eradication missions, and bolster the air mobility of its ground troops; (7) however, key elements of the Department of Defense's counternarcotics assistance were of limited usefulness or could have been better planned and coordinated by U.S. and Mexican military officials; (8) although the Mexican government has agreed to a series of actions to enhance its counternarcotics capacity and the United States has begun to provide a larger level of assistance, no performance measures have been established to assess the effectiveness of these efforts; and (9) the Office of National Drug Control Policy has recognized the need to develop such measures and has indicated that it plans to devise methods for evaluating U.S. and Mexican counternarcotics performance by the end of 1998 as part of the binational drug control strategy.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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