Between the Coca Fields and American Noses
As part of the 2008 drug-control strategy, Bush allocated about $500 million to interdiction efforts in Mexico. It’s called Plan Mexico—based off Plan Colombia, which, as we know, hasn’t stopped the drug trade. At all. But it sounds like we’re cracking down on drugs.
In between the multi-billion dollar drug cartels of South America and the noses of Americans with a taste for cocaine are the beat officers in Mexico. And they’re not faring so well.
The poster is the government’s answer to a different sort of sign left in late January at the bottom of a monument honoring fallen police officers: a hand-scrawled list of 22 officers, 5 of whom had already been gunned down in the street. The sign warned that the others would also be killed “unless they learn.” In all, eight police officers have been assassinated here this year and three are missing….
A turf war among drug cartels has claimed more than 210 lives in the first three months of this year. Many of those killed were young gunmen from out of town. The number of homicides this year is more than twice the total number of homicides for the same period last year. Several mass graves hiding 36 bodies in all have been discovered in the backyards of two houses owned by drug dealers.
Realistically, what match is a municipal cop—or even a dozen of them—to the violent drug cartels thriving on the black market. The drug runners are desperate and the king pins are rich. Their survival and continued wealth hinges on getting cocaine to market. As Jodie in the coffee shop told me when I showed her the article, “How many AK-47s do [the cops] have?”
It would be easy to blame the coke-snorting hipsters in the US for the bloodshed they are funding. But I don’t. Altered consciousness has always been a human pursuit, and it always will be. The failure and blame is among doctors and economists, who see this problem at face value and fail to demand the solution of a regulatory system that would save these poor Mexican cops from being set up, just to get knocked down.
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