Thursday, June 17, 2010

Mexico's Drug Wars

Although Mexico has been a producer and transit route for illegal drugs for generations, the country now finds itself in a pitched battle with powerful and well-financed drug cartels. Top police commanders have been assassinated and grenades thrown, in one case into the crowd at an Independence Day celebration.

The upsurge in drug-related violence is traced to the end of 2006 when President Felipe Calderón launched a frontal assault on the cartels by deploying tens of thousands of soldiers and federal police to take them on. Mr. Calderon has successfully pushed the United States to acknowledge its own responsibility for the violence in Mexico since it is American drug consumers who fuel demand and American guns smuggled into Mexico that are used by the drug gangs.

Reflecting concern over drug trafficking, in June 2010 a Justice Department report described a "high and increasing" availability of methamphetamine mainly because of large-scale drug production in Mexico

Read it all here.

2 comments:

Michelle said...

The rate of methamphetamine into this country is unbelievable. Drug addiction is growing by leaps and bounds and it needs to stop. The only way for it to stop is to control the borders that are bringing in these illegal drugs.

Alice C. Linsley said...

That's certainly true, Michelle. A related threat comes by a linking up of the Mexican drug lords with Jihadists who are learning to speak Spanish and hope to pass themselves off as Mexicans. The jihadists in Yemen and Afghanistan support their efforts by producing and selling opium.