Former Mexican ‘drug czar’ sentenced to 38 years in US prison

The news

A US court has sentenced Mexico’s former head of public security to 38 years in prison for taking bribes from the very drug cartels his office wanted to target.

Genaro García Luna was originally arrested in 2019 and ultimately found guilty last year of, among other things, providing intelligence to the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel in exchange for huge sums of money.

“He helped the cartel, he protected the cartel, he was the cartel,” the lead prosecutor said. “Death is in your hands.”

His is one of a number of high-profile drug trafficking cases in Mexico playing out in US courts: García Luna was convicted by the same judge as infamous drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, with Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada – arrested this summer – this week in the same dock.

SIGNALS

The García Luna trial may have more impact than other drug trafficking cases

García Luna’s case is expected to cause even more of a stir in Mexico than similar high-profile drug trafficking cases, The New York Times wrote. When drug lord ‘El Chapo’ was convicted, revelations of bribery and wrongdoing came as no surprise to most Mexicans, who are ‘closely familiar’ with the violence and corruption wrought by crime bosses. On the other hand, García Luna was a government official, long seen as a mythical figure in the fight against drug cartels: his case likely sheds light on “a corrupt system that almost everyone believes exists, but few have seen up close,” according to the Times. wrote.

The case illustrates the failures of the war on drugs

García Luna’s case not only draws attention to the corruption plaguing Mexico’s security services, but also to the failure of the US-backed fight against drug trafficking, The Guardian argued last year. When García Luna was in power between 2006 and 2012, Mexico’s then president Felipe Calderón launched a “war on drugs” campaign, relying heavily on US support: Washington sent $1.5 billion between 2008 and 2016 to support his government’s efforts. García Luna was “one of Washington’s favorites,” a former foreign policy adviser to Calderón told the paper — so his trial “could expose this complex web of cooperation, but also the complicity between officials in Mexico and the United States in the war on drugs. human trafficking and organized crime.”

Overdose deaths in the US are declining, but the reasons are unclear

As the US prosecutes people linked to drug trafficking, overdose deaths in the country are surprisingly declining, with a 10% drop between April 2023 and 2024 – although the reasons for the decline remain unclear. The majority of overdose deaths are caused by the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which is imported in illicit form mainly from Mexico. Experts hypothesize that increasing access to addiction treatment and over-the-counter medications to combat opioid overdoses, especially Narcan nasal spray, could explain some of the decline in deaths. “People’s ability to manage such a toxic drug supply may be changing,” one epidemiologist told The New York Times. “People have been frequently exposed to fentanyl for years now. They have adapted.”