Mexico Faces Uphill Battle on Drug Trafficking : Nation’s Efforts Haven’t Significantly Reduced the Flow of Narcotics to U.S.

On a rise overlooking a parade ground at Military Camp No. 1, Mexico’s defense secretary and attorney general ceremoniously pressed a plunger and watched as more than a ton of narcotics went up in smoke.

“We are carrying out to the letter our president’s orders to combat drug trafficking,” said the defense secretary, Gen. Juan Arevalo Gardoqui, as 40-foot flames and billowing clouds of black smoke shot up from a cinder-block enclosure.

More than 1,000 troops in formation, a row of armored-car crews wearing helmets and goggles and a grandstand full of Mexico City’s top military brass looked on solemnly last month as the fire consumed the cardboard cartons, gym bags, suitcases and plastic bags filled with 14 varieties of narcotics accumulated in various seizures around the country.

Included in the pyre, Mexican officials said, was more than 2,580 pounds of cocaine and nearly 50 pounds of heroin with a combined wholesale value estimated at $66 million.

Publicity Campaign

The elaborate drug-burning ceremony was staged as part of a campaign to counter bad publicity about Mexican drug trafficking, most of which supplies a demanding U.S. market of about 500,000 heroin addicts, nearly 6 million cocaine users and millions of marijuana smokers.

The extensive drug-smuggling operations here have made Mexico the leading single-country source of heroin and marijuana entering the United States and a leading point of transfer for cocaine, U.S. officials say.

While Mexican authorities can point to some recent successes in eradicating opium-poppy and marijuana fields, rooting out official corruption and battling drug smuggling gangs, the effort does not appear to have significantly reduced Mexico’s production of narcotics or their flow into the United States.

“The world is not winning the war against narcotics trafficking,” Atty. Gen. Sergio Garcia Ramirez said. On the contrary, “the problem is tending to grow” and will lead to additional frustrations unless its causes are attacked on a global scale, he added.

Share Increasing

In fact, Mexico’s share of the U.S. drug market has been increasing, largely because of successful U.S. efforts against drugs elsewhere, favorable climactic conditions and the competitive edge of Mexican “black tar” heroin. This type of heroin, which hit the U.S. market about two years ago, is easier to produce, cheaper and more potent than the traditional variety, law enforcement officials say. It sells for $150,000 for 2.2 pounds wholesale, contrasted with $200,000 for the heroin sold two years ago.

Mexicans traffickers “are trying to corner the market,” said a U.S. official who monitors the drug trade.

The Mexican share of the U.S. heroin market once reached as high as 90%in the mid-1970s, after the so-called “French connection” was broken and a narcotics control agreement was signed with Turkey. Then, as a result of intensified anti-drug efforts here, the Mexican share was pared down to about 20%by 1978. Since about 1982, however, it has been steadily creeping up, reaching 32%in 1984. Mexico’s annual heroin production of 2.8 metric tons--98%of which is exported--now accounts for about 46%of the heroin consumed in the United States, according to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration statistics.

The changes reflect the versatility of international drug traffickers, who adapt their operations to exploit weaknesses that develop in narcotics control activities when drug-fighting efforts are intensified in a particular area, officials say.

‘Playing Catch-Up’

“We put our finger in another dike, and now we’re playing catch-up in Mexico again,” one U.S. official said.

Besides heroin, Mexico has been increasing its market share of the marijuana smuggled into the United States, passing Colombia last year as the largest foreign supplier, according to an intelligence report of the DEA. Mexico now is estimated to account for more than 40%of the roughly 8,000 metric tons of marijuana brought into the United States annually.

Increasing amounts of cocaine also have been flowing into the United States from Mexico, although the drug is not produced here. About a third of the cocaine smuggled into the United States--30 to 40 tons a year--now comes through Mexico from production centers in South America, officials say.

The illegal drugs cross the 2,000-mile Mexican-U.S. border mostly in private or commercial vehicles through established crossing points or in small aircraft using 31 known air-border penetration areas and more than 470 clandestine airstrips within 100 miles north and south of the border, according to the DEA and the U.S. Customs Service. The Customs Service reports that there are more than 760 land-border crossing sites used by drug smugglers.

Curbing the Demand

Mexican officials say they take seriously U.S. concerns about the drug-smuggling problem, while pointing out that more needs to be done also by the United States to curb demand.

According to Gen. Gardoqui, 408 Mexican soldiers have been killed fighting drug traffickers in the last 10 years. At least 27%of Mexico’s 105,000-member army is involved full time in fighting drug trafficking, notably in eradicating poppy and marijuana fields, military officials say. Especially active has been a 5,000-member unit called the Mars Task Force, which was deployed earlier this year in Mexico’s Golden Triangle, the border area of the northern Mexican states of Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Durango.

The Mexican attorney general’s office, which says it spends half its $36 million annual budget on anti-drug efforts, has 52 helicopters assigned to an eradication program aided by the United States. U.S. funding for the Mexican anti-narcotics campaign this year amounts to $15 million.

Agent Murdered

It was the murder of one DEA agent, Enrique Camarena, in February, 1985, and the torture of another, Victor Cortez, that helped to galvanize U.S. criticism of Mexican drug smuggling and the official corruption that allows it to operate so extensively. According to a report by the DEA in Washington, Camarena and his Mexican pilot, Alfredo Zavala, were abducted, tortured and murdered by a drug-smuggling ring “with the assistance of former and present Mexican police officials.”