Drug trafficking

Americans’ love of drugs may soon bring Mexico’s collapse

Buy an avocado, boost a Mexican drug lord? Soon enough, it seems.

Reports from south of the border say Mexican avocado farmers are taking up arms to protect their increasingly valuable crop from the country’s ­rapacious cartels, always on the lookout for a quick buck.

But considering the ease with which cartel gunmen dispatched the Mexican army in a pitched battle in Sinaloa State this month, one would guess that the odds don’t favor the ­avocado farmers.

Or Mexico itself, for that matter — and this has ominous ­implications for the United States, too.

Flush North Americans — think millennials, in particular — love avocados; they will pay top dollar for them, which sets the market into motion. Most often this means good things. But not always.

Think cocaine and other ­illicit drugs.

As with avocados, drug dollars follow demand: A recent RAND Corporation study reports that Americans spent just shy of $150 billion on illegal narcotics in 2016. The bulk of this money goes to Mexico, which also has become a major conduit into the United States for synthetic opioids like Chinese-manufactured fentanyl, upping the cartels’ take.