According to the report of the National Drug Threat Assessment 2010, day by day the availability of the illicit drugs is increasing in United States. Cartels of Mexico are supplying large amounts of drugs to United States.
Everyone is affected by the selling and buying and abusing drugs. The estimation of the economic cost is around $215 billion per annum. According to report, the Mexican organizations do the drug operations in every region of United States, and it is expanding into the rural and suburban areas in United States. The trafficking of the drugs has become a great threat to the U.S. Street and prison gangs in United States also have provided cooperation for drugs distribution to cartels of Mexico. There is a great flow of the drugs like heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine across the border and there is expectation that it will increase further. Apart from the increase in the overdoses and overdose deaths, the purity of the heroin has increased and there was also reduction in price of heroin because of increase in the flow of the drugs. There is estimation that the production of the Heroin may increase from 17 metric tuns to 38 tons from 2007 to 2008.
Though Mexican government has banned certain chemicals which are used in the production of Marijuana, a substitute for those chemicals was found out by cartels of the Mexico. There is increase in death rate of 98 percent because of overdose of the prescription opioids like morphine, codeine and methadone from 2002 to 2006.
National Drug Threat Assessment of 2010 reported that illegal drug abuse and diversion and abuse of the prescription drugs are the serious problems in the United States.