Trends in Production, Trafficking, and Consumption of Methamphetamine and Cocaine in Mexico

Abstract

Over the past decade, Mexico has experienced a significant increase in trafficking of cocaine and trafficking and production of methamphetamine. An estimated 70% of United States cocaine originating in South America passes through the Central America–Mexico corridor. Mexico-based groups are now believed to control 70%–90% of methamphetamine production and distribution in the United States. Increased availability of these drugs at reduced prices has led to a parallel rise in local drug consumption. Methamphetamine abuse is now the primary reason for seeking drug abuse treatment in a number of cities, primarily in northwestern Mexico. Although cocaine and methamphetamine use have been linked with the sex trade and high-risk behaviors, such as shooting gallery attendance and unprotected sex in other settings, comparatively little is known about the risk behaviors associated with use of these drugs in Mexico, especially for methamphetamines. We review historical aspects and current trends in cocaine and methamphetamine production, trafficking, and consumption in Mexico, with special emphasis on the border cities of Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana. Additionally, we discuss the potential public health consequences of cocaine use and the recent increase in methamphetamine use, especially in regards to the spread of bloodborne and other infections, in an effort to inform appropriate public health interventions.

Keywords:

• bloodborne infections
• cocaine
• injection drug use
• methamphetamine
• Mexico

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kimberly C. Brouwer

Dr. Kimberly Brouwer is an Assistant Professor in the Division of International Health and Cross-Cultural Medicine at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She joined this faculty in January of 2004. Before this appointment, she worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, initially as an Emerging Infectious Diseases Fellow and later as an epidemiologist, where she focused on aspects of HIV/malaria co-infections. Her Ph.D. is in molecular epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. Since joining the faculty at UCSD she has collaborated with Mexican researchers in studies of injection drug use in cities along the U.S.–Mexico border. Dr. Brouwer is currently principal investigator of a 5-year grant to explore social and environmental factors affecting disease transmission and risk behaviors among injection drug users in Tijuana, Mexico. Dr. Brouwer's research interests also include studies of the epidemiology and molecular epidemiology of tropical infectious diseases.

Patricia Case

Dr. Patricia Case is an Assistant Professor of Social Medicine and Director of the Program in Urban Health at the Harvard Medical School. She received her M.P.H. from the University of California–Berkeley in 1991 and her Sc.D. from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1997, joining the faculty of Harvard Medical School the same year. Dr. Case has been collaborating on research activities assessing HIV among injecting drug user populations since 1986. Dr. Case's research interests are wide ranging but have primarily focused on the social context of infectious disease transmission among urban drug users. Her research approach combines field-based qualitative methodologies with a more traditional epidemiologic perspective to contextualize the findings of large quantitative studies. She has made major contributions to the national debate to legalize syringe exchange programs and in extending knowledge of understanding to the health concerns specific to women who have sex with women. Dr. Case is currently working on projects at the intersection of policy and behavior and is a NIDA-funded investigator on the Rapid Policy Assessment and Response project that uses rapid assessment techniques to evaluate HIV and drug use policy implementation in Poland, Ukraine and Russia and is collaborating on the development of similar HIV policy evaluation projects in several other countries.

Rebeca Ramos

Rebeca L. Ramos was born in El Paso, Texas and has lived as a U.S.–Mexico Borderlander all her life. Her formal education includes a Masters in Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1990) as well as graduate studies in Ethnohistory at the National Institute of Anthropology and History, Mexico City (1980) and in Social Anthropology, Universidad Ibero-Americana, Mexico City (1978). She is the Technical Director of the U.S. Mexico Border Health Association (USMBHA) responsible for all technical cooperation activities. She is also the founding associate of the Border Planning and Evaluation Center, a collaborative of public health specialists that fosters cooperation between academics and the community to strengthen processes and outcomes. During her tenure as Technical Director of the USMBHA, Ms. Ramos has been an innovator in public health, working primarily in the areas of substance abuse, HIV, TB, and diabetes. As head of the Technical Cooperation Division of the USMBHA she has coordinated over 300 health courses, seminars, and symposia attended by an estimated 10,000 health and allied social services professionals. Ms. Ramos brought the USMBHA and the El Paso Community Foundation to partner for the development the Border AIDS Partnership whose mission is to increase funding for HIV/AIDS education, prevention, and care services in border counties. She is also President of Compañeros International, affiliated with the NGO Programa Compañeros which provides harm reduction services for injection drug users in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Ms. Ramos has received several awards for her work, including recognition in 1998 by Healthcare Forum/Healthier Communities for outstanding efforts to improve community health status and being named a 2001 Border Health Hero from the Pan American Health Organization.

Carlos Magis-Rodríguez

Dr. Carlos Magis-Rodríguez is a physician and epidemiologist who has been working in the epidemiology of HIV since 1988 in the Mexican Ministry of Health. From 1990 to 1994 he was in charge of the National AlDS Case Registry. Since 1996, Dr. Magis-Rodríguez has been in charge of research at CONASIDA (Centro Nacional para la Prevención y Control del VIH/SIDA—The National Center for the Prevention and Control of AIDS). Since 1993 he has been interested in injection drug use and HIV. In 1996 he began a risk intervention project on the U.S.–Mexico border. The project was conducted in two different cities with incarcerated users and individuals who sought treatment in different NGO's (non-governmental organizations). Dr. Magis-Rodríguez has presented in many diverse national and international HIV/AIDS meetings and has published numerous papers and books on HIV/AIDS in Mexico. Recently he participated in HIV/AIDS meetings sponsored by the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) and other agencies to address issues of mutual interest for researchers working on both sides of the California/Mexico border.

Jesus Bucardo

Jesus Bucardo, M.D., M.P.H., is Assistant Clinical Professor at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. He obtained his medical degree from the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California and his public health degree from San Diego State University. He completed his psychiatry residency training at UCSD and postdoctoral training at the UCSF-Center for AIDS Prevention Studies. He maintains a clinical practice with focus on cultural and community psychiatry at UCSD in a community mental health center near the U.S.–Mexico border. His current research interests include cultural adaptation of prevention interventions, psychosocial rehabilitation in schizophrenia, cultural psychiatry and use of traditional and alternative medicine methods in psychiatry with Latino populations in Mexico and the United States.

Thomas L. Patterson

Dr. Thomas L. Patterson is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry of the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. He received his Ph.D. in Comparative Psychology from the University of California, Riverside in 1977. Since that time he has conducted research in a number of areas, including HIV/AIDS prevention, rehabilitation of older patients with psychosis, and stress responses of caregivers of Alzheimer disease patients. Dr. Patterson has been conducting psychosocial research with HIV-positive populations since 1989. He is the Principal Investigator of a U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) funded sexual risk reduction intervention for “at risk” female sex workers in four Mexican cities along the U.S.–Mexico border. In addition, he is Principal Investigator of a National Institute on Drug Abuse funded project testing a risk reduction intervention for HIV-positive methamphetamine-using men who have sex with men. Dr. Patterson is also the principal investigator of an NIMH-funded sexual risk reduction intervention for HIV-negative, heterosexually-identified, meth-using men and women. He has published many papers and chapters in the field and serves on a number of AIDS review committees. Dr. Patterson is currently the editor of the journal AIDS and Behavior and has served as coeditor and on the editorial boards of a number of other journals.

Steffanie A. Strathdee

Dr. Steffanie A. Strathdee is an infectious disease epidemiologist who has spent the last two decades focusing on underserved, marginalized populations in developed and developing countries. Since January 2004, she has been the Harold Simon Chair and Chief of the Division of International Health and Cross Cultural Medicine in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at UCSD. Her recent work has focused on the prevention of bloodborne infections and barriers to care among injection drug using populations, specifically HIV and viral hepatitis. In the last decade, she has published over 170 peer-reviewed publications on HIV prevention and the natural history of HIV infection. She is the principal investigator of several behavioral intervention studies among drug users and has played a leading role in evaluations of needle exchange programs in Canada, the United States, and India. Currently, she is engaged in research projects in a number of international settings, including Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Pakistan, India, Tajikistan, and Russia. She is also principal investigator of a 5-year grant to characterize the epidemiology of bloodborne infections among injection drug users in Tijuana, Mexico. Her projects have been funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and USAID.