America Loves Cocaine Again

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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.

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.

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Colombia is producing records amounts of cocaine, and the volume of the drug arriving in the U.S. is driving down prices, the people familiar with cartel operations said.

Cocaine prices have fallen by nearly half to around $60 to $75 a gram compared with five years ago, said Morgan Godvin, a researcher with the community organization Drug Checking Los Angeles. “The price of pure cocaine has plummeted,” Godvin said.

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