@2A,
They would connect with Nigerian Syndicates for the heroin and Carribean, South American , or Black traffickers down south for the cocaine.
Yeah I just read some ( admittedly dated ) information about Nigerian traffickers operating in Chicago from the DEA , not to mention that Chicago has a lot of ( if not the largest amount ) of fairly sophisticated/well connected street gangs , so using it as an example wasn't the best .
That said I bet there are many second and third tier cities in the US where the Mexican cartels are the only game in town , so I think my point stands in that case .
The Mexican Cartels won't ever be the only game in town since they rely on local networks to distribute the drugs. Some Wholesale level and majority of Mid-level & Retail level trafficking are domimated by American crime groups period. Cartels just supplying the wholesale drug trade and that's their main influence.
Yes that is correct , however said cartels very much exercise a great deal of ( indirect ) influence via their domination of wholesale trade . After all they could apply a great amount of pressure on low level organized crime groups engaged in drug trafficking , by threatening to cut off the supply of drugs , either by telling the middlemen that they won't be getting any more product if they don't talk some sense into retailers or in a more direct way by telling the retailers directly ( though the former is probably more likely to occur than the latter ) .
And as an aside I meant wholesale trade when I typed the only game in town . Of course there are places in the US where lower level gangs can buy ( to use a good example ) heroin from non Mexican cartel suppliers who also obtain their supply from non Mexican cartel sources all the way up the line , but to my understanding such places are more the exception than the rule .
Of course correct me if I'm wrong but to my knowledge Colombian and Dominican OC groups have little presence outside of the Northeast and Asian OC groups generally don't operate outside of cosmopolitan cities/metro areas .
I ( admittedly ) know little about Nigerian groups , but they seem to be much bigger players in Europe than over in the States . I mean I don't even recall them being mentioned in the DEA's latest national drug threat assessment .
