How much cocaine came to US from mexico

1. What reporters and agencies actually mean by “from Mexico”

When U.S. agencies and international bodies say cocaine “comes from Mexico,” they commonly mean that shipments pass through Mexico on their final leg into the United States, not that Mexico is the country of origin or primary producer; Colombia, Peru and Bolivia remain the principal producers of coca that becomes cocaine ^{[1] [4] [2]}.

2. The headline percentages: 70%–90% via the Mexico/Central America corridor

Multiple sources converge on the assessment that the vast majority of U.S.-bound cocaine traverses the Central America–Mexico corridor: the U.S. government and the UNODC cite figures close to 90% of cocaine entering the United States crossing the U.S.–Mexico land border or first transiting that corridor, while earlier DEA/academic summaries place “over two thirds” of South American cocaine entering the U.S. via this route ^{[1] [3] [2]}.

3. Why numbers vary: seizures, modeling and definitions

Discrepancies in published figures arise because agencies rely on different methodologies — seizure shares, chemical “signatures,” market-demand modeling and economic-accounting approaches — and because seizure rates do not equal import shares; scholars and statisticians emphasize that seizure-based percentages can over- or understate actual flows and that there are “no precise estimates” of illegal-drug import shares without strong model assumptions ^{[5] [6]}.

4. Quantity estimates are partial and unevenly reported

Public reports and datasets provide seizure totals (for example, multi-hundred kilogram seizures reported in specific regions or years), and economic estimates of the value of cocaine imports into Mexico, but they do not supply a consistent, year-by-year, U.S.-bound tonnage figure attributed solely to Mexico in the open sources provided; UNODC and DOJ material give corridor shares but not a single definitive metric of total kilograms delivered from Mexico to the U.S. market in recent years ^{[7] [8] [1]}.

5. Alternative views and caveats from analysts and NGOs

Independent analysts and NGOs caution against simplistic readings: WOLA and others note that statements like “90% comes through Mexico” can conflate initial transit routes with final smuggling points and can be invoked to justify particular policy responses (such as border militarization) without grappling with market dynamics, shifting maritime routes, or the role of Central American transit states ^[3]. Moreover, academic work shows import-share estimates fall when different modeling approaches are used, underscoring the uncertainty ^{[5] [6]}.

6. The practical takeaway for readers seeking a numeric answer

The best-supported, defensible summary from the cited reporting is that roughly 70–90% of the cocaine that ends up in the United States travels through the Mexico/Central America corridor and enters the country across the U.S.–Mexico border; however, converting that share into an authoritative tonnage or kilogram total requires data and modeling choices not available in the public sources reviewed here, and seizure-based figures should be treated as noisy proxies, not precise measures ^{[1] [2] [5] [3]}.

7. What’s missing and where evidence is strongest

Open-source evidence is strongest on relative-route importance (the corridor’s dominance) and on production origins (Andean countries), but weaker on a single, reliable kilogram/tonnage number of cocaine that “came to the U.S. from Mexico” in recent years; obtaining such a figure would require access to pooled law-enforcement seizure microdata, chemical-marketing signatures, and transparent modeling assumptions — items that public summaries and fact-sheets typically do not fully disclose ^{[4] [6]}.