Maize, Mexico’s main crop and staple food, faces threats like displacement by drug cultivation. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jan 22 2014 (IPS)

As the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) passes its 20-year milestone, Mexico is seeing the displacement of traditional crops like maize by marihuana and opium poppy as a result of falling prices for the country’s most important agricultural product.

After NAFTA came into force between Canada, the United States and Mexico in January 1994, prices of maize and other agricultural products began to tumble, hurting the incomes of the smallest farmers who became the target of drug trafficking mafias.

“This has happened in regions where there are poor farmers, where prices have collapsed and productivity is low. They have to resort to drug traffickers for loans or to rent land,” said Víctor Quintana, an adviser to the Frente Democrático Campesino (Peasant’s Democratic Front) in the northern state of Chihuahua.

Quintana told IPS about the Pima native people who live in Chihuahua and the adjacent state of Sonora, who he says have become suppliers of raw materials to drug trafficking cartels engaged in violent disputes over distribution routes to the lucrative U.S. market.

“The process started in the 1980s, but has increased since 2006 with penetration by the Sinaloa and Juárez cartels,” he said about the battle between the two drug mafias for control of the border region.

Maize is especially symbolic in Mexico, regarded as its place of origin. With 59 native strains and 209 varieties, it is an essential part of the population’s diet.

Mexico produces 22 million tonnes of maize annually, but has to import a further 10 million tonnes to meet demand, according to the agriculture ministry and producers’ associations.

Some three million farmers grow maize on about eight million hectares. Two-thirds of them grow it for family consumption only.

Omar García Ponce, a researcher in the department of politics at the University of New York, told IPS that “the deteriorating economy in maize-growing municipalities (state subdivisions) is closely linked to the cultivation of drugs.”

In his view, declining income from maize farming is the reason why the country has become one of the foremost producers of marijuana and opium poppies.

García Ponce, Oeindrila Dube and Kevin Thom of the University of New York published a study in August 2013 titled “From Maize to Haze: Agricultural Shocks and the Growth of the Mexican Drug Sector,” which concludes that lower prices increased the planting of illegal crops in municipalities more climatically suited to growing maize.

The authors analysed data from more than 2,200 municipalities for the period 1990-2010 on production, agricultural employment and income. They also measured the impact of variations in maize prices on drug cultivation and pointed to the violent consequences of an expanding drug sector.

The study emphasises that NAFTA forced liberalisation of maize trade, expanding import quotas and reducing tariffs, as well as precipitating a huge fall in maize prices in Mexico.

Maize prices fell 59 percent between 1990 and 2005, leading to a 25 percent reduction in the incomes of maize farmers.

At the same time, drug-related killings increased by an average of 62 percent in maize suitable municipalities, the study says.

As a result of the 2007 global food crisis, maize prices increased by eight percent in the year to 2008, while drug-related homicides decreased by 12 percent in maize suitable municipalities.

Drug seizures rose by 16 percent and eradication of drug crops by eight percent, in contrast with non-maize growing areas.

Production of native maize in Mexico is also endangered by the threat of authorisation of commercial production of transgenic maize.

“[Lower] maize prices contributed to the burgeoning drug trade in Mexico,” says the study, the first to identify the role of rural income shocks in the development of drug trafficking in Mexico.

The study mapped areas of the states of Sinaloa, Guerrero, Michoacán, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Tamaulipas, Yucatán and Campeche, where there has been crop substitution. Drug crop eradication has been concentrated along the western and southern ranges of the Sierra Madre and adjacent coastal areas.

Ministry of defence (SEDENA) figures indicate that marijuana eradication increased between 1990 and 2003 from 5,400 to 34,000 hectares, respectively, declining afterward to 17,900 hectares in 2010.

Between December 2006 and November 2012, the six-year term served by conservative President Felipe Calderón, the armed forces destroyed 98,354 hectares, while in 2013, during the first year of conservative President Enrique Peña Nieto, 5,096 hectares were destroyed.

Opium poppy eradication began with 5,950 hectares in 1990, rose to 20,200 hectares in 2005 and fell to 15,331 hectares in 2010. Between December 2006 and November 2012 the armed forces destroyed 86,428 hectares.

In 2013, 14,419 hectares were eradicated.

The subject of illegal crops is taboo in maize-growing areas. Although rumours abound that farmers are growing drugs hidden among their fields, no one openly admits to having anything to do with it.

“You hear about a particular producer growing drugs, but people are afraid to talk about it,” farmers in the states of Jalisco and Guerrero told IPS on condition of anonymity for the sake of their safety.

Since 2011 the Mexican media and the attorney general’s office announced that at least two small farmers had been arrested for growing drugs in the central states of Puebla and Guerrero.

Peña Nieto announced a 26 billion dollar budget and “an extensive reform” for the country’s rural areas in 2014. But experts are doubtful whether these measures will change the situation of small farmers.

“If they concentrate on a handful of states and do not change the structure of resource distribution, things will remain the same in the rural areas, and in particular, with drug cultivation,” Quintana said.

On the other hand, “if idle lands are cultivated, if productivity is raised, and if technical support is provided for poor and indigenous small farmers, the problem could shrink,” said Quintana, who advocates a minimum guaranteed price for maize to counteract the dismantling of support for local production resulting from NAFTA.

García Ponce recommends “greater emphasis on helping the most vulnerable farmers. The situation in rural areas and the incentives that exist for farmers to turn to illegal crops have been ignored by public policies.”

The study also concluded that the fall in maize prices has resulted in an increase of five percentage points in the probability of a drug cartel appearing in a municipality.

A packet of 1,000 colourful, empty capsules costs roughly 2.25 dollars and is freely available at major medicine markets in Karachi. Credit: Adil Siddiqi/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Dec 14 2012 (IPS)

When 26-year-old Muhammad Qasim, a rickshaw driver from Lahore’s low-income Shahadra settlement, died last month, his family was shocked to learn that the cause of death was an overdose – of cough syrup.

On Nov. 23, shortly before going to bed, Qasim drank a whole bottle of Tyno cough syrup, which he was in the habit of doing on a somewhat regular basis.

A little while later, his mother heard strangled noises coming from his bedroom and ran in to see him foaming at the mouth. He was rushed to the hospital, where he died soon after.

Qasim’s death brought the total number of overdose fatalities up to 19 in the month of November alone. According to the police, most of the victims consumed Tyno regularly.

However, results from Qasim’s postmortem found that the actual cause of death was not simply an overdose, but asphyxia – a deficiency of oxygen in the body caused by, among other things, the presence of a toxic substance in the bloodstream.

The tragedy has rekindled public discourse on drug regulation in the country, and highlighted the need to fine-tune the Drug Act of 1976, which has consistently failed to stem the proliferation of counterfeit drugs in the market.

Against the backdrop of the Isotab drug scandal last January, in which 125 patients in Lahore died after consuming adulterated heart medication, it is becoming increasingly clear that the market is awash with substandard drugs that don’t meet the required standards.

These imitation drugs are sold openly in bazaars and shops around the country.

Though statistics on fake drugs are hard to come by, the World Health Organisation estimated back in 2004 that 40 to 50 percent of drugs consumed in Pakistan were counterfeit. In 2006 the country was ranked 13th on a list of the world’s leading producers and sellers of fake medicines.

Nadeem Iqbal, head of the Islamabad-based Network for Consumer Protection, told IPS, “It’s a huge problem and one which cannot be ignored.” Yet, very little punitive action has been taken against those involved in this fraudulent business, he added.

Furthermore, the market is highly resistant to monitoring and quality control.

According to Iqbal, gaps in drug regulations, weak institutions, and lax law enforcement policies are largely responsible for allowing criminals to easily infiltrate medical supply chains.

Despite a public outcry – led by the media and consumer protection groups – Iqbal is convinced that the situation will not change until “proper laboratory testing facilities” become available.

Efforts underway

A slew of drug-related deaths triggered a move towards the establishment of the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP), which the president signed into being last month, to control the country’s pharmaceutical industry and ensure proper licencing, pricing and quality control of drugs.

According to National Regulations and Services Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan, “No pharmaceutical company owner will be considered for membership of the Authority’s (public) board.”

While acknowledging that this is a move in the right direction, many  experts are sceptical that the newly formed agency will be able to bring the drug industry to heel.

Dr. Samrina Hashmi, president of the Pakistan Medical Association’s Sindh chapter, believes that rampant corruption in the industry makes the best of laws nearly impossible to implement.

“This agency requires transparency in governance. People should be taken on board (based) purely on merit and should be technically competent, otherwise there is danger of (the agency) falling prey to vested interest groups,” Dr Sania Nishtar, founder of the Islamabad-based non-profit health policy think tank Heartfile, told IPS.

In addition, existing laws need to be properly imposed by increasing the inspection force, speeding up court processes and handing out tougher punishments, according to experts in the medical field. Under the 1976 Drug Act, the maximum punishment for counterfeiting is ten years’ imprisonment and a fine, depending on the nature of the crime; but this sentence has yet to be handed down to a single perpetrator.

Nishtar hopes the DRAP will bring about amendments in the drug law, which has “many exploitable gaps” and requires massive amounts of resources and technical expertise in order to become a truly independent body, capable of superseding corporate agendas.

Additionally, the number of drug inspectors, pharmacists and testing laboratories needs to be increased exponentially.

At the moment the country has a field force of 250 drug inspectors to monitor over 400 pharmaceutical companies and 50,000 pharmacies, according to Nishtar. “Not only are these numbers paltry, but even (inspectors’) expertise is weak,” she pointed out.

Only 200 trained pharmacists are spread out between the country’s 50,000 chemists’ shops. “It would take the country more than 20 years to train pharmacists for these outlets,” Nishtar said. “I am not sure if the country has the capacity to do that.”

A 2001 survey of 311 of the 506 pharmacies in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, published in the International Journal for Health Care, showed that only 19 percent of pharmacies met licencing requirements, only 22 percent had qualified pharmacists, only 10 percent had temperature monitoring and only four percent possessed an alternative supply of electricity for refrigerators.

The research concluded that most drug sellers had “fragmentary knowledge regarding drug dispensing and storage, and improper dispensing practices”.

DRAP should undertake the task of setting up a network of state-of-the art drug testing laboratories at the provincial level in an attempt to quickly identify the efficacy and quality of all ingredients used, strengthen pharmacists’ capacity, and promote the production of low-cost generic medicines that can be made available to the poor, said Hashmi.

According to the WHO’s ‘World Medicines Situation Report’, Pakistan spends 77 percent of its healthcare budget on buying medicines. But many consumers end up purchasing fake drugs, which have not been properly tested or have passed their sell-by date.