Calling It Like It Is on Drugs War

Drugs are bad for society, and should not be tolerated. If you disagree, read on or leave, but I won't hear your comments.

What exactly is the "War on Drugs" accomplishing? Not much, apparently. Read this article for a rough update on how it goes in North America. Have I mentioned how much I like BBC News? They don't seem to have the same agenda as American news, so I can get information there that will never be reported here in America, even when the subject is purely American.

A recap of the article: Mexican drug gangs are spreading their operations in the US, and their profits are increasing, despite this "War on Drugs" that has been underway since I was in Junior-High (maybe before then). The amount of drugs crossing the border into the US is at an all time high, and so are drug-related deaths. My personal experience: it seems like half the people in my apartment-complex are pot-heads. According to the article, Mexican gangs are taking $40 billion back to Mexico every year, while the American government in 2007 pledged $1.4 billion over 3 years to fight the cartels.

Its now 2010: 3 yrs is up. And that pitiful $1.4 bil could never have competed against $40 bil a year. Essentially, the US government is spending 1/85.7th of the revenues of the drug cartels to fight those drug cartels. Actually, less than that, since much of that money is going to fight drugs in different regions of the world. Its pitiful. The gangs are winning.

Now for the part that really bothers me: The Mexican government blames the US government for not sending money and equipment fast enough. This is so revealing. Think about it from their perspective -- they are exporting $40 billion a year to the US, and those US dollars are highly coveted. So the government can say "give us more money to fight the drugs," while probably never intending to take any real/meaningful/decisive action against the cartels -- doing so would end 2 huge sources of money for the country. To put it in perspective, Mexico's top export to the US was oil, at $30 billion, in 2007, and in total they exported $198 billion to the US (link). If you consider drugs, then drugs are actually Mexico's top export, and it accounts for 20% of Mexico's exports to the US. Compared with GDP, Mexico's drug exports account for roughly 4% of its GDP. Enlightening, right? Does anyone still think that Mexico actually wants to put an end to the flow of drugs across the border?

I say its time for the US to assume more direct control of the fight against drugs, at least in North America. Assist the Mexican government with fire-bombing their poppy fields, and don't give them a choice. Here in America, I want to hear news that the FBI has rounded up all of the gangsters and dealers at once. There are thousands of them, maybe millions if you count all the college dealers. Our society cannot afford this dead-weight any longer, and we definitely should not tolerate other governments using the drugs issue to hoodwink us.

----An afterthought, but I wanted to find out about North Korea's connection to the drugs trade, and I found this wonderful article (I will also make a side-link to it): http://www.heritage.org/Research/Testimony/North-Koreas-Connection-to-International-Trade-in-Drugs-Counterfeiting-and-Arms