Official: Not much drug market change after Guzman arrest

WASHINGTON – A top U.S. anti-drug official says that almost two years after the recapture of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, there haven’t been big changes in the drug trade.

James Walsh says that “what I am hearing is the changes aren’t significant because the consumption and the demand is still there.”

Walsh is the State Department’s acting principal deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. He spoke Wednesday at a conference in Cancun, Mexico.

Guzman twice escaped from Mexican prisons. He was mostly recently recaptured in January 2016 and transferred in 2017 to the United States, where he has pleaded not guilty to charges that he oversaw the Sinaloa drug cartel.