Drug trafficking is basically a criminal activity of a transnational nature, which not only encompasses a great diversity of operations but also imposes different roles on several countries at the regional level, mainly due to the massive profits it generates.

According to research conducted by Carlos Kaplan, published in the Mexican Magazine of Comparative Law, ever since this plague settled in Latin America, three or four decades ago, a sort of international and regional division of labor took place.

There are countries and groups, specialized in the production of the raw materials; the industrial manufacture of drugs; its transfer from the south of the continent to the United States where the largest consumer market is located; the distribution and treatment of the amount of money they collect.

Kaplan points out that the United States plays an important part in this scheme because of its various roles as consumer, producer, importer and exporter; money launderer, supplier of chemical inputs, weaponry, transportation and communication technology and, above all, as the benefits recipient.

Drug trafficking generates a powerful criminal economy, which is often linked to and confused with  legal economy, making it more difficult to fight.

The newspaper La Jornada published some information coming from the Financial Intelligence Unit, UFI, of the Treasury Department, disclosing that only between 2016 and 2018 the main mafias earned in that country one billion Mexican pesos.

Translated to U.S. dollars the figure stands at 45 billion 989 million, according to the exchange rate of September 22nd.

The UFI warns that this data only entails the activity of 19 criminal organizations and added that the total amount will definitely be much greater when all the information is carefully reviewed.

During this period, the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto continued the war against drug trafficking that Felipe Calderón Hinojosa began during his six-year term, from 2006 to 2012, due to pressures exerted from Washington.

Odd struggle, which main objective was to impose the power of narcos in almost all the Mexican territory, where all weapons were provided by the United States and the casualties were at the expense of that neighboring country.

With such an economic power, the will and support of officials, politicians and even presidents can be traded, or rented, in many places of the world.  Mexico is starting to fight that criminal financial force and it is necessary that this example be followed in Asia, Europe and, of course, in the United States.