The Middle with Jeremy HobsonIn this episode of One Thing Trump Did, we unpack the Trump administration's move to label a handful of drug cartels as terrorist organizations, opening up the possibility of using military force against cartels in Mexico. Jeremy is joined by journalist and author Sam Quinones. #cartels #cartel #terrorist #Sinaloa #CJNG #fentanyl #meth #drugs
Welcome to One Thing Trump Did, Available exclusively on the Middle podcast feed.
I'm Jeremy Hobson.
Each week on this podcast, we are looking at one thing coming from the Trump administration because there's so much, and in a non partisan way, just like on the Middle, we try to learn as much as we can about it. In this episode, we're focusing on drug cartels and more specifically, Trump's move to designate a handful of these criminal enterprises as terrorist organizations. An executive order labeled eight Latin American cartels as posing the same national security threat as say isis? Does President Trump spoke about the need to wage war on these groups in his address to Congress last month.
The territory to the immediate south of our border is now dominated entirely by middle cartels that murder, rape, torture, and exercise total control. They have total control over a whole nation, posing a grave threat to our national security. The cartels are waging war in America, and it's time for America to wage war on the cartels, which we are doing.
So what are the implications of this?
Joining me now is someone who spent a lot of time covering both drug cartels and their impacts here in the United States. Journalist and author Sam Quinones. Sam, great to have you on.
Thanks very much for having me. I appreciate it. Jeremy.
So let's first define our terms. When we say cartels, what are we talking about? How big are they? How much do we know about the cartels and how they're run.
Well, that has actually changed quite a bit in the last several years in Mexico. I lived in Mexico for ten years, and when I was there, what people called cartels there were really just four of them. They were very well defined. There was the the uh Tijuana cartel, the Ariano Felix cartel, the Santaloa cartel which controlled the Arizona Sonora entryway. There was the Juarez cartel that controlled Juarez El Paso, and there was the Gulf cartel, which controlled a lot of the Texas Mexico down by the Gulf of Mexico. There's really the dust has settled to some degree, and so you have really two now that dominate the landscape out of Mexico. First, the oldest, best known Sinaloa Cartel formed really around Sinaloa, and then the other one is Nueven, the New Generation cartel. They emerged in the state of Jalisco, which is where Gudalajara is located, really around the production of metham fetament, and has now become much larger than that and much more more stable in cartel terms. Anyway, I would say this so that the term cartel is also not exactly precise. If you study economics, you know the cartels are groups of producers.
Who combine, they work together.
They work together to force the price up. And both these groups now have transitioned and say fully to producing synthetic drugs. So it is not technically like OPEK. Remember OPEC in the seventies came together and control the production of oil to force the price up. With drugs, particularly those two synthetic drugs, we have seen exactly the opposite. The drug production is so vast, so really uncontrolled that the price certainly of methem fetament feedanol is a harder thing to price. But with methem fetament we have pricing history pretty much across the country, and we have seen clearly that methem fetament's price has dropped by i would say eighty to ninety percent, depending on where you are. Since Mexican cartels have taken over basic production all in Mexico of that drug well.
And just like Opek, the organizations we're talking about are.
In it to make money.
That makes me wonder about this designation as terrorist organizations. Terrorists we think of as organizations or people who have a political or an ideological aim.
That's not the case with these cartels.
No, I'd say that's true, that there is no essential political motivation or central ideological tenet. They are capitalists, mafia capitalists, basically underground underworld capitalists. I think the designation of foreign terrorist groups though, doesn't come from their ideology. It comes from the effect that they having in the United States of the products that they are making. And with that, you are right that there is not a central ideological motivation to any of this. It's all money and getting a larger territory and kind of competing with your rivals and so on from other groups and even within the same cartel. But the effect on the United States has been devastating, and considering that it comes from one general area, it's really a different kind of effect because these two groups have covered the country in methamphetam and fentanyl, and that is really unprecedented too. Now they are able to do that because they have made that switch to synthetic drugs, meaning drugs made only with chemicals that they make themselves with ingredients again from elsewhere, mostly from China. But these ingredients allow them as synthetic drugs allow them to make these drugs all year round if you have the ingredients and the ingredients they're able to get through shipping ports into Mexico, mostly these ingredients coming from China. And so what has happened is they have really, in a way unprecedented in the history of drug use in America, covered the entire country.
So how much responsibility would you put on them for the fentanyl deaths in particular that we've seen in the US There were eighty seven thousand overdose deaths last year, which was down from the previous year but still very high, and most of those deaths attributed to opioids like fentanyl.
I would say that they have very great culpability for all of that. They are producing a drug that should be only used very carefully in my new doses in surgery by trained anesthesiologists. Fentanyl in the hands of people who like them is just simply devastating. Frequently synthetics, particularly in the potency, and that just the relentless nature of so much of this are about supply creating demand. It's not really so much about demand creating supply. They have created the supply down there and it is coming through and it is addicting people. Fentanyl in particular is that way because it's put into lots of drugs that people think they're using cocaine, they think they're using a perpose set and it turns out to be fentanyl. But it's also gets people a lot of people addicted. I would say most of the people using fentanyl on the street now are fully addicted to fentanyl, need fentanyl, and are looking for fentanyl.
But if they are, if the cartels are business people and they're killing some of their customer base, isn't that a pressure point for them? Or I could also ask if the Trump administration is so angry about this that they are ready to potentially use military action on the cartels within Mexico, is that something where they say, oh, you know what, we probably should stop with the ventandyl because look at what is doing to us.
Well, you would think I would say that some of that's probably true. On the other hand, again, these are not cartels in the same way that OPEIC was. This is not the Microsoft of dope. It's not the United Airlines or the GM of dope. There is no group up top saying you, let's do this, let's do that, we need to plant. No, it made attempts at doing that. It doesn't seem to work most of the time. When it comes to production, you are doing it on your own and no one's telling you you can't do this, or it's really a function of how many chemical ingredients you can get and how much you produce. And right now and for the last numerous years, I would say they have been able to get enormous quantities, all but unlimited quantities of ingredients for the meth, for the funnel that they make. All of this, of course ensured by the weapons that they are able to smuggle from the United States South into Mexico, mostly assault type weapons, and of course ammunition and all the rest.
So now we're hearing about the possibility that the Trump administration would use drone strikes, for example, on these organizations, on these cartels.
How would that work.
That's a great question. How would it work? How to go over in Mexico. How would it be viewed internationally? I don't think it's ever been tried, and I don't know, And you'd have to be pretty certain that you weren't bombing somebody who was legitimate lombiting organization or an American farmers, because a lot of these labs are out in the middle of in the middle of the countryside. So how does that all work? I think that's an excellent question. I think we're all we'd all be watching to see what after what effects on after effects would have.
Well, and of course it would have effects on the US relationship with Mexico, one of our largest trading partners.
We're going to talk about that in just a moment. Stay with us.
We're speaking with journalists and author Sam Quinones. We'll be right back with One Thing Trump Did. Welcome back to One Thing Trump Did exclusively on the Middle Podcast Feed.
I'm Jeremy Hobson.
This episode, we're talking about the Trump administration's move to designate a number of drug cartels as terrorist organizations. I'm speaking with author and journalist Sam Kenyonez. Sam, Mexico's president has since Trump came in, been willing to cooperate and allow more surveillance by the CIA, for example of the cartels. But here's what she said about the potential for military action by the US inside Mexico. Quote, we reject any form of intervention or interference. That's been very clear. Mexico coordinates and collaborates, but does not subordinate itself. There's no interference, nor will there be. What do you think it would mean for the relationship between the US and Mexico and further cooperation by Mexico if the US were to say we are going to drop a bomb from a drone on one of the cartels.
Well, let me first say that I have great hope in President Shinbaum's new administration. It already has shown itself to be much better and when it comes to collaboration on this issue than the previous administration of Andre's Manuel Lopez Obrador. However, to say Mexico collaborates and operates, that has not been seen in any sustained, deep, sustained way. In certainly the last administration did very little of it when it comes to this topic, I have to say, and so I appreciate that she is very leary and upset up the idea of having Mexican territory essentially bombed by American drones. I would say, however, Mexico has a very long way to go before to gain the trust of the United States or i'd say the world in terms of how it deals with the drug issue. I would say, we have our own issue problems as a country the United States, one of them big ones being, of course, the want and sale of assault weapons that are smuggled into Mexico. That is a very big deal. But I don't see the history of collaboration and cooperation on the part of the Mexican government in general. Certain elements certainly have, but overall, I would say that that one of the problems that we face is that Mexico has not really offered the kind of collaboration and cooperation that it should and when it does, for example, in busting meth labs. For you know, in my last book The Least of Us, I wrote about the Mexican government had busted somehow something like three hundred meth labs and not arrested one single person, not around three hundred meth labs, and somehow every one of them was empty when they got there. You know, that kind of thing doesn't do much too.
Why is that? Why is that? Is that just because it's because.
The collaboration with the underworld the people were tipped off I had. I mean, the collaboration was really with the underworld, not with the United States on this. I'm not saying that we are blamed free here in this obviously, but but I really have to push back when I hear, oh, we we we collaborate and co op. No, I'm sorry that has not happened in the past, and at any times. Anytime it has, it's been very short lived and hasn't lived beyond the one administration to the next. There needs to be this kind of sustained collaboration between the two countries. Again, we have our own issues, but that that kind of statement, and I wish I have high hopes for her administration and I really hope it goes well and it couldn't be any really, she has a very low low bar to clear because the last administration was dismal on this topic.
Do you think that this is more of a threat from the Trump administration or something that they would actually do.
I think it wouldn't be much better if it were a threat. I think as soon as you start doing these things. As soon as you impose tariffs as a threat to get people to do something about frontannel, you lose the leverage, I think, and I think, yes, drone strikes, I think they would should always be used as as a threat. There should be constant prodding. There should be as well. It seems to me that we need to show Mexico that we are serious about the flow of guns into their country. It's and it's it's it's outrageous the numbers of guns that flow south, and and how these traffickers have been able to get away with arming themselves. I mean, if they're foreign terrorists, why are we arming them? Why do we not have major units at each border crossing into Mexico checking cars, making sure for cash too, huge amounts of cash, because it's cash and guns that go south the drugs come north. And so I think those that kind of collaboration would also go a long way to showing Mexico that it's really time now to modernize. Up to now, it's been like the remnants of the old Mexico, the corrupt, the Mexico behind the sunglasses, and I think it's time time to move beyond that. Mexican people. The American people have just suffered because of this enormously. But I have to say too, Mexican Mexicans have been just beaten down by these awful cartel groups that seem to just have the run of certain areas of the country.
One of the things that comes up every time people talk about this issue is the idea that what if America were to legalize more things, then maybe you could crush the crush the industry, the underground industry. I wonder on that front, how has the legalization of marijuana in the US, which more than half the states now have it legalized, affected the drug cartels.
Well, I would say that marijuana is no longer a drug for the Mexican drug cartels. That's one of the reasons they have moved more fully into synthetics. On the other hand, you know, in the United States, we have a whole lot of under ground illegal marijuana, including in states where it's made legally, and you know, we we that's a whole other discussion to have marijuana, because I think we have botched it massively. What marijuana appears, it feels to me like, is is like the beginnings of the opioid epidemic, and that we have basically turned over to the producers and people who profit from this substance the same way we did with opioids, turned over the statutes and what's legal and what's not legal, and what they can do and what they can't do with regard to producing and selling this stuff. And then there is no limits on potency. But we don't know what we're doing when it comes to legalizing this stuff. And marijuana is now being sold in I'd say, just scary, scary potency and it's affecting kids all across the country. I mean, that's a whole other discussion to have, but I would say one thing it has done is that marijuana is really not a drug for the trafficking world in Mexico anymore any more than poppies are either. I mean, it's all about making your drugs, not growing your drugs down in Mexico right now.
Yeah, we did an entire episode taking calls about whether marijuana legalization was working, and the very things you're talking about were brought up. Whether it is how much more potent they are sometimes ninety percent and it's compared to like three percent.
If you were smoking to joint back in like nineteen eighty five.
And then also the packaging for kids, like making these things look like they're candy.
So that was a very interesting.
I mean, we were upset when camel cigarettes fashioned Joe camel ads aimed at kids, but gummy bears apparently that's okay.
Right, right. So on the issue of sort of what the Trump administration is hauling as terrorist organizations, I wonder what you think about the labeling of it that way, because we know that they are very interested in the messaging in the pr of how immigration in the border are being or being talked about, and the idea that if you call these groups terrorist organizations, then you can say we're arresting a bunch of terrorists coming in at the border.
Yeah, you know, I mean I look at that as kind of a political move. I guess, more than anything, the way I view this is that technically they are not terrorists. You will not find no manifesto, no religious ideological, political doctrine motivating people in the New Generation or the sainta Loois cartel at all. It's all about the money, end of story. Just like the mafia, the Italian mob in the northeast of the United States was The effect is kind of like a terrorists might have, though in two ways, just the mass death, but also the chronic debilitating effect of people who get addicted to these drugs. Again, I believe that this is more a story nowadays about supply in enormous quantities, enormous potency, unrelenting quantities, creating addiction, creating among people who had no real plan to get to that state. And many of those folks die, and many of those folks now you can see them on the streets, homeless, encauntments and whatnot. And I believe it's all these two drugs are major drivers behind mental illness and behind the death rate and behind the rates of addiction. We did this to ourselves in some sense because, again referring to my first book Dreamland on the opioid Epidemic, we allowed for the pharmaceutical industry to create massive numbers of opioid addicted Americans who were not addicted to those drugs before the opioid epidemic began, and they began promoting it and wantonly and pushing doctors to wantantly prescribe these drugs. Those folks, if they were addicted when fentanyl arrived on the scene. Wherever they lived, they were addicted to pills or heroin. It's very very likely if they did not get off the street, that they are now dead. And what you've been seeing now the people lately, I would say, in the last five years, U seeing people who have gotten addicted without pills being the painkiller pills being involved at all. And so you've got this whole new world of people addicted who were then going to die. There is really I don't think there's If you don't get people off the street and into treatment, I think it's very high likelihood those people will not live long. There's no such thing as a long term fentanyl addict. And that's because fentanyl common AUTOMATICO is just in staggering, relentless high potency quantities.
So what are people that you talk to your sources telling you about what they think of the Trump administration plan to label the cartels as terrorist organizations? Do they think this is what a good idea, this might actually make a big difference or this.
I would say it depends who you are. People in law enforcement tend to look at it as a good idea. I think people in the drug counseling world, certainly drug addicted world. I would say those folks barely think about it. It's not a big big deal. I would say some people view it as some folks in the drug counseling world, who in my view, may may look at this in a way that does not fully correspond to the reality on the streets, may view it as, you know, a terrible, terrible thing. I tend to view it as kind of okay, okay, but it guess it depends on what you do with that, and I don't I see. It feels to me far far more productive to be working with a new Mexican administration who is with a president showing herself to be willing to move forward on this and on other issues, then on immediately just kind of like you know, scorched Earth policy and screw it. Nobody's ever collaborated with us from Mexico, so I'm not going to do it now. I don't think that's what's going on here now. So I think it would be very counterproductive. Tariffs, high tariffs, I would say definitely, Drone strikes would be a counterproductive. I think it's far far better. It needs to be a bi national approach, law enforcement on both sides, and other groups too. Under other parts of government need to be heavily involved in this on both sides, and the extent to which we can push that forward so that it is not just a one time thing but sustainable across administrations, the much better off we will all be, both in Mexico and in the United States.
Sam, can you let me just ask you one more question.
In my life as a journalist, I've you know, worked in Washington covered politics, where you can usually find a way to get the person on the phone that you need.
I've been on.
Wall Street where it's much harder because the businesses don't have to talk to you if they don't want to. How in the world do you find out what's going on with the cartels? Do you get like blindfolded and put in the back of a van or anything like that, or how does it work?
No, No, I'm a I'm a coward. I don't go that route. Well, some rarely, you know, First of all, you talk to a few groups of types of people. I find that on the streets of the United States you can find some wonderful, wonderful sources. And I do not refer so often to people who are, you know, roaming the streets addicted to whatever. I think a better better sources are local cops, paramedics, er docs, folks like that, people people who have seen this, who see this every single day. I also in the past, when I've been writing my books, I have reached out heavily, as I always have for years, to people who are in prison. And you'd be surprised how often people in prison are willing to talk with you from prison. And and then you know, of course there's law enforcement. There's a cops, there's dea, there's a there's a prosecutors very good sometimes probation parole folks like that. You can if you talk to people and triangulate and and and work and maybe people in the same area or whatever, or or from the same case, you know, you can put together quite a bit. For my Dreamland book. Most I think I quoted I can't remember right now, but I think I quoted eight or ten Mexican drug traffickers, all of whom were in prison when I contacted them. Prison and jail, federal prison in particular in the United States is the depository of i'd say massive amounts of numbers of the of Mexican traffickers, from the top top guys down to the lowliest soldier. And I think that is a wonderful place to find information. It's not as hard as you would you would think, although sometimes the wardens of these prisons stand in your way. I think it's a huge, huge mistake for them to do that. There are journalists out there trying to tell the story of drugs in America coming from Mexico, and sometimes, as in my case, I've been blocked a couple of times from warden's who, Well, I don't like journalists, so forget you. You know, well that So anyway, that's kind of how I do it. I find jail in prison much better for a couple of First of all, you know where they are, so i'one and so you can find them easily. Number two, it's safe. And number three, it's also very interesting is people who are in prison have thought more deeply about their lives, of what they've done to their lives, are with their lives, and that can really be a very interesting thing to talk to I talk about with a guy like that, and so that has happened to me several times, many a time, I would say gang members too are very much like that, and so finding people in prison are where the prison is where I like to find folks for all the reasons that make total sense from a journalist's point of view.
That is Sam Kenyonez, author and journalist who has spent years covering the Mexican drug cartels.
Sam, thank you so much for joining us.
That's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
And thanks you for listening to One Thing Trump Did. It was produced by Harrison Patino. Our next middle episode will be in your podcast feed later this week. We're talking about the economy with former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. And if you like this podcast, rate it wherever you get your podcasts and write a review. Our theme music was composed by Noah Haidu. I'm Jeremy Hobson. Talk to you soon.
