Drug Mules Are Most Often American Citizens

Last week, Huffington Post Live produced an interesting video about the war on drugs in this country.  The segment brought together a panel of experts – including a border patrol officer, a former senior advisor to the White House, an investigative journalist, and even an incognito drug dealer — via the magic of the internet, to discuss a new study by the Center for Investigative Reporting that may change the image of drug mules in the American mind.

The segment is interesting for many reasons, but perhaps for us it is particularly captivating because it potentially overturns a long held stereotype. We often blog about the importance of smashing the stigmas associated with drug use and addiction in order to begin fixing the underlying problems. Here may be another opportunity.

The study analyzed seven years of drug busts by border patrol at the US/Mexican border, and determined that not only do four out of every five drug busts involve Americans, but three out of every four drug mules are US citizens. Common perception has been that drug mules are Mexican or other foreigners. But here we see that a US citizen is caught with “trafficking” amounts of drugs at least 60% of the time, showing that the face of the drug mule in the public imagination is different than the reality.

So what does this mean for the War on Drugs? Perhaps only time will tell, but we can hope that policy makers and elected officials will take these findings into consideration, and give careful thought to how a misperception of drug abusers may be sabotaging meaningful lawmaking. The fact is that the war on drugs is happening inside the United States, and immigrants may be unfairly targeted.