MEXICO CITY – A little more than 1 million people work in the illegal drug trade including “around 200,000” women, according to the COCyP association of peasant organizations, based on police estimates.

The president of that organization, Jose Jacobo Femat, said in a communique Friday that the situation is “an alarming phenomenon” that, in the case of women, is the result of “gender inequality and the lack of opportunities to find legal employment.”

“It shows how mistaken the federal government’s public policies are for easing poverty in rural areas with its assistance programs, since the female sector has seen the alternative to be taking part in growing drug crops and in drug production and distribution,” Femat said.

The peasant representative made his comments at the inauguration of the 2nd National Meeting of Women COCyP Leaders and were based on the number of women arrested and prosecuted for such crimes in Mexico.

According to Femat, the states where women are most active in drug-trafficking work are Chihuahua, Sonora and Durango in the northern part of the country, and in the southern state of Guerrero, where “there are entire towns living off this (illegal) economy.”

COCyP estimates that on the average, people in rural Mexico involved in the drug trade earn between “5,000 and 10,000 pesos (between $384 and $770) per week, the note said.

Speaking on the same topic Friday, the head of the National Farm Workers Union, or UNTA, said that some 600,000 day laborers have been attracted by the cartels to grow marijuana and poppy plants.

UNTA leader Alvaro Lopez announced the information at an event in Saltillo, capital of the northern state of Coahuila, the daily Reforma said Friday.

Mexico has been plagued in recent years by drug-related violence, with powerful cartels battering each other and the security forces amid a scramble for control of smuggling and distribution.

The annual death toll has risen from 1,500 people in 2006 to more than 6,000 last year. Upwards of 5,600 people have died so far in 2009.

Since taking office in December 2006, President Felipe Calderon has deployed more than 50,000 soldiers and 20,000 federal police officers across Mexico in a bid to crush the cartels, yet the pace of gangland killings has only accelerated.