America Loves Cocaine Again—Mexico’s New Drug King Cashes In
-
https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/mexico-drugs-cartel-oseguera-trump-586f0cec
From a heavily guarded mountain hideout in the heart of the Sierra Madre, 59-year-old Nemesio “Mencho” Oseguera reigns as the new drug king of Mexico, aided in his ascendance by America’s resurging love of cocaine and the Trump administration’s escalating war on fentanyl.
Oseguera spent decades building his Jalisco New Generation Cartel into a transnational criminal organization fierce enough to forge a new underworld order in Mexico, displacing the Sinaloa cartel, torn by warring factions, as the world’s biggest drug pusher.
The Sinaloans, Mexico’s top fentanyl traffickers, got caught in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, which promised to eradicate the synthetic opioid.
The crackdown has left an open field for Jalisco and its lucrative cocaine trade, elevating Oseguera to No. 1.“‘Mencho’ is the most powerful drug trafficker operating in the world,” said Derek Maltz, who served this year as interim chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration. “What is happening now is a pivot to much more cocaine distribution in America.”
Cocaine sold in the U.S. is cheaper and as pure as ever for retail buyers. Consumption in the western U.S. has increased 154% since 2019 and is up 19% during the same period in the eastern part of the country, according to the drug-testing company Millennium Health. In contrast, fentanyl use in the U.S. began to drop in mid-2023 and has been declining since, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
