Thread: Drugs, guns and money

Drugs, guns and money

A violent struggle across the border

By Roderic Ai Camp
2:00 a.m. March 14, 2009

The U.S. media suddenly have taken an acute interest in Mexico's level of violence and crime, which often occurs within a few short miles of the border. Why does the intensity of violent crimes seem to have reached a fever pitch, and what does it mean for Mexico and the United States?

Most of this violence is linked to a single criminal activity, the production and distribution of drugs to the United States. The market for drugs in the United States extends back many decades. The Mexican government first intensively used its armed forces in anti-drug missions in the early 1980s, strongly encouraged by the United States. Mexico's leadership requested the army's assistance because state and local police lacked the capacity to carry out anti-drug tasks. During this era, the military largely devoted its efforts to destroying marijuana and poppy fields rather than actively seeking out drug traffickers. By the early 1990s, the army's mission shifted to pursuing drug traffickers, with Mexicans witnessing a violent confrontation between civilian federal agents and the military when the latter protected a drug shipment in Veracruz.

The ability of drug cartels to corrupt civilian and military officials reached a new high in 1997, when President Ernesto Zedillo announced the appointment of a drug czar, a three star general, who was arrested weeks later after having been in the pay of a drug cartel. The depth to which Mexican officials were compromised by the drug traffickers limited the level of cooperation between the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and attorney general with their Mexican counterparts.

During the crucial 2000 presidential election, Vicente Fox campaigned on a promise to remove the military from the drug war, but on taking office he discovered that civilian agencies were not up to the task. Fox increased the intensity of the army's anti-drug missions, accomplished greater cooperation in intelligence sharing and anti-drug operations between the Mexican attorney general and the armed forces, and achieved a higher level of cooperation with American officials, extraditing some drug traffickers to the United States.

When President Felipe Calderón was inaugurated in 2006, he pursued an anti-drug policy even more intensely than his predecessor. His initial success produced a leadership vacuum among major drug cartels, who turned on each other with brutal violence, including torture and decapitations. The number of violent crimes related to drug trafficking increased dramatically, and the cartels began using the same techniques on police and prosecuting attorneys.

As the army intensified its efforts, the cartels retaliated, for the first time using similar forms of violence against the military. The violence has spilled over to innocent civilians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Today, the level of lawlessness and criminal violence in Mexico has created a serious national security problem. Numerous communities, including Tijuana and Ciudad JuÃ

We need to legalize illegal drugs in the United States, regulate them under a civil code, tax them under a FairTax, use part of the tax revenue to fund education about the risk and consequences of drug use, and provide free rehabilitation to those who want or need it.

Keeping drugs illegal causes unnecessary violence, generates illegal immigration to run the drug trade, adversely impacts civil rights, costs the US over $300 Billion a year in lost money supply that leaves our country and ends up in the pockets of criminal violent foreign illegal drug cartels and has caused more deaths and ruined more lives of Americans through enforcement than drug use itself.

For more information:

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP)

www.leap.cc

Watch this Video:

http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php?name=Content&pid=28

Also:

Marijuana Policy Project (MMP)

http://www.mpp.org/

Drug, guns and money

This reminds me of the Warren Zevon song

SongMeanings | Lyrics | Warren Zevon -

Send lawyers, guns and money . Dad, won't you get me out of this . . .

I'm an innocent bystander . Somehow I got stuck . Between a rock and a hard place . . .

www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/119357/ - 55k - Cached - Similar pages

violence. In 2008, discouraged by the continued violence, nearly six out of 10 Mexicans believed that drug traffickers were defeating the government, and 42 percent believed the drug cartels eventually would win the war on drugs.

If the 5 major drug cartels stop fighting each other and join together they will take over Mexico in a number of months or maybe even weeks.