Another $197mil wasted

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A $197m (£133m) aid package to help Mexico fight drugs cartels has been released by the US government.

The move is part of the Merida Initiative, a $400m (£270m) scheme to assist Mexico's efforts to take on the drugs trade.

US Ambassador Tony Garza formally unveiled the programme, which includes the donation of helicopters and surveillance aircraft, in Mexico City.

Drug-related violence in 2008 has been blamed for over 4,000 deaths in Mexico.

In the last two years, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has deployed more than 40,000 troops, along with federal police, in a crackdown on drug gangs in the country.

The initiative is part of a $1.6bn (£1.1bn) US plan to help train and equip security forces and strengthen justice systems in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

Corruption fears

Mexico is in the midst of a major campaign against immensely powerful cartels that traffic cocaine and other drugs to consumers in the United States, says the BBC's Stephen Gibbs in Mexico City.

Ninety percent of all the cocaine consumed in the United States is believed to reach the country via Mexico.

President Felipe Calderon, has long sought, and been promised, financial aid from Washington to try to defeat the traffickers.

The aid has been held up for months, partly because US legislators were concerned that the money might end up in the hands of corrupt Mexican officials.

None of the $197m which has just been released will be in the form of cash.

Instead equipment is being provided to enable American and Mexican law enforcers to work more closely together.

Forces unleashed

The deal comes at at time when the drug war in Mexico appears to be having increasingly violent.

In Tijuana last weekend, for example, there were 25 murders, including nine decapitations.

What the numbers signify is open to interpretation.

The Mexican Government says that the increased killings are often the result of leaderless drug gangs turning on each other for the fewer spoils that remain.

But some analysts fear that by taking on the drug runners, President Calderon has unleashed forces he arguably will not be able to control.

There is plenty of evidence that Mexican law enforcement agencies have been extensively infiltrated by the cartels.

The government is having to rely on the army to police parts of the country.

Mr Calderon says his war on drugs will be long and difficult. In that, he is being proved right, our correspondent says.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk./2/hi/americas/7764054.stm


the war on drugs is a huge waste of money.

Disregarding any issues about the war on drugs, why the hell are we paying for Mexico's drug war when our government is about to go bankrupt?

Because Mexico is teetering on collapse because of the Drug Wars. If you think the Illegal Immigration situation is bad now, you don't even want to think about how bad it would get after a collapse the United Mexican States.

So why not liberalize our immigration policies to allow more of them in legally and let our businesses benefit from a cheap labor source? We could do with an infusion of human capital.

Because the s**t going on there's on the verge of spilling over into the US. Just look up what's going on in Juarez near Las Cruces, NM and El Paso, TX. They're on the verge of reaching 1,400 homicides this year alone. A friend of mine from high school lives in Las Cruces, he's been seeing a lot of things going on, including getting to "enjoy" seeing a couple of people murdered on his way home this past week. While I can't say whether or not the money spent is going to the right places, it could damn well be a good thing to spend it on.

Here's a few examples of what's happened the past few weeks:

http://www.elpasotimes.com/juarez/ci_11104676

http://www.lcsun-news.com/ci_11079018?I ... n-news.com

Maybe, but not all at one time. It can be gradual. It costs more to take these people and other costs in here over time, than trying to stabilize Mexico.




I've heard of that too. Supposedly, the biggest and worst cartel is Los Zetas. They are very brutal, and seem to have military training. I think Venezuela may involved to some extent in the cartels, as we know for a fact they were/are helping FARC, and earlier this year, Colombia intercepted somewhat enriched Uranium from Venezuela. Hell, with all the instability, I think the Border patrol needs to become at least a paramilitary like in India, if not a full-blown military branch.

The Article from wikipedia on the Mexican Drug War is useful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War

It might sound counter intuitive but the most effective way to make drug cartels and gangs and the associated violence go away is to legalize all drugs.

They would go out of business almost overnight and go bug other countries for a change.

Contrary to popular belief drug use wouldn't appreciably increase and when their profits disappear the criminals go away (and find some other way to fund their terrorism if you buy into the "all drug dealers help terrorists" theory).

Well, some drugs are probably illegal for a reason (Cocaine, Heroin, etc.) but Marijuana and Hashish could be legalized.

as someone who's known people to do all sorts of stuff (i avoid all of it except my MJ) i think the only thing that should have strong control over it is heroin. coke is a nasty, dangerous drug but a social one for most. heroin is something i've never seen the person NOT completely ruin their lives with. it's garbage that'll waste you away and even if you do quit, you've still axed a good 10-20+ years off your life. but even with that, i think it does more harm to those individuals than helping them with making it illegal. it puts them in much more dangerous situations, it makes them believe they're already criminals and so more apt to steal/mug/whatever, and generally it causes such people to degenerate and move away from society much faster than if it were legalized and people actually tried to help those poor losers or simlpy left them to die.

It's too hard to say why the US Government makes any of the decisions it does. They say their pledging 197m to fight the drug war... but there's probably another reason we don't know about... there's probably less, or more, or different money... going somewhere totally unrelated... to do something seen as beneficial for the US... who knows?

If I sound cynical it's because I am. I don't trust the US political system one iota. They're a bunch of megalomaniacs who lie pathologically to serve themselves... to the extreme detriment of society.

When Prohibition was repealed, the gangsters and rumrunners didn't just disappear. They just did other crimes instead.

If I'm a dealer, and suddenly dealing isn't making me any money because of cheaper legal sources, what am I going to do? I'm going to go find something that WILL make me money and deal that instead. Maybe I'll take up protection, or illegal gambling, or shipping in stronger s**t than the government allows.

Crime did drop though. Prohibition was a failure that exacerbated crime and gangsterism. Same with prohibitions on marijuana, heroin, and most other drugs. Criminalizing them simply does not work, and creates more problems than it solves.

In the Uk, Crime has gone up. Why? Mostly because there are 300+ new crimes.

Prohibition automatically made criminals out of a lot of people when it was brought in. When it was dropped, there was less crime. Correlation.

I'm not saying it wouldnt affect crime levels.. it would. But it certainly isnt the golden goose, and it certainly would not stop all these people involved in the trade from committing crime.

Prohibition also caused an increase in other crimes that were committed in connection to the black market, gang activity, or other ways of circumventing the new laws.


Decriminalization isn't a magic bullet, no, but it would have major positive effects.

Possibly, but in my experience, I only ever met one stoner who even used his brain efficiently for anything other than building complex smoking paraphernalia. And I have met quite a few...

I know some marijuana users who are otherwise rational, intelligent people and just use pot on an occasional basis recreationally. But that's not really relevant. I don't think smoking pot or doing other drugs is a good idea. I just recognize that attempts to ban such substances are counterproductive.