Posted on 02/17/2009 1:25:56 PM PST by AuntB
Responding to fears of escalating violence in Mexico that could spill over the border into Texas and other states, the U.S. government has stepped up law enforcement.
Border Patrol and Drug Enforcement Administration agents were sent to shore up local law enforcement, and to their credit the violence has not spread to those communities and regions. In fact, El Paso — just across the border from Ciudad Juarez, which ranks as one of the most dangerous places in the world — is ranked as one of the safest cities in the United States.
Unfortunately, the stepped-up enforcement in border cities hasn’t kept Mexican drug-cartel violence from the United States. It simply moved it.
Today, cities far afield from the southern border face increasing violence from the cartels. As far north as Sioux Falls, S.D., and Anchorage, Alaska; east to Atlanta; west to you name it, the drug cartels have taken up residence. The Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center says that 230 U.S. cities are home to drug cartel activity.
The United States has not yet seen the beheadings and police executions that are commonplace in many Mexican cities, but the violence is escalating.
Phoenix experienced more than 300 kidnappings last year resulting from cartel drug activity. Five men in Birmingham, Ala., were found with their throats slit after obvious torture by electric shock. The incident list goes on and on.
Mexican authorities have stepped up their interdiction efforts, as have U.S. agencies, but it hasn’t been enough. In fact, the U.S. Joint Forces Command issued a report in recent days that places Mexico on the same level as Pakistan in terms of the risk of potential collapse of the government.
Investigative agencies have determined that the Mexican cartels, at war with each other as well as law enforcement, have ties to Italian organized crime.
All this is fed, of course, by the demand for drugs in this country. At stake for the cartels is $28.5 billion in drug sales in this country.
With that much money at stake, and with nothing to lose back home, the cartels are likely to do anything to hold onto their turf. The cartels have now armed themselves with everything from automatic weapons to rocket launchers.
The answer, of course, is multifaceted. Demand for drugs must be reduced. Law enforcement resources including people and equipment must be augmented. And international cooperation must be continued and improved.
Easy to say, but more difficult to achieve. The cost will be enormous.
Yet the alternative — all-out warfare in the streets of the nation’s cities — is not something that can be permitted to occur.
COOL!
The Pure Food and Drug Act adresses that concern quite well I think.
Besides when was the last time you heard about Budweiser contaminated their product with Bourbon in order to hook drinkers on something 'harder'?
Come to think of it Bud puts rice in their beer, so I do suppose anything is possible.
L
I assumed a rational meaning in your first post. Sorry.
My mistake.
No, no will never work....makes MUCH too much sense!
Unfortunately, the two issues are inexorably intertwined. Certainly, properly securing the border will go a long way towards mitigating the flow of drugs from down south.
“Unfortunately, the two issues are inexorably intertwined. Certainly, properly securing the border will go a long way towards mitigating the flow of drugs from down south.”
Plus a fence & armed patrols would be stopping them from coming up here to grow in the national forests and parks and brew meth in the off season. All the meth ingredients are coming out of Mexico. They import the stuff by the barrel.
I agree and I think we agree that step one is securing the border to get the situation under control on our end.
I’m ok with marijuana legalization but pot smokers will still scream about oppression when they see the laundry list of laws that will arise to deal with it.
In other words, let us become like the drug dealers in aiding a abetting the death of our youth. I have a better idea. Let’s have a real drug war and start executing drug dealers. That would be a real war and I suspect have quite a curb on the dealers who are destroying the youth of this nation.
Retreat is not an option.
Allowing the enemy to stride victoriously across our nation is what the traitorous left wants.
We need a surge in the war on drugs.
We need to take the fight to the enemy, and fight them over there so we won't have to fight them here.
“In other words, let us become like the drug dealers in aiding a abetting the death of our youth.”
Actually, the drug use in the countries that have decriminalized drugs drops.
http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/67
For example, the Netherlands, has HALF the rate of drug use that the USA.
When I was up in the UP last June we asked a park ranger about wandering off the trails a bit. He said it was OK if we did but asked if we knew what pot plants looked like and warned us to back away from them and report it if we found any.
Even in the far north they’re growing it in the national and state forests.
I did not know WF Buckley realized the futility of the drug war.
It’s a waste of money, time, and freedom to try to save morons from themselves.
“
When I was up in the UP last June we asked a park ranger about wandering off the trails a bit. He said it was OK if we did but asked if we knew what pot plants looked like and warned us to back away from them and report it if we found any.
Even in the far north they’re growing it in the national and state forests”
I’m drawing a blank...where is UP?
Here’s more on this with lots of photos of these cartel grows. Our sheriff tells us...stay out of the woods...hard to do when you live there!
http://towncriernews.blogspot.com/search?q=invasion+800+miles
The Mexican border has moved 800 miles north- On Lou Dobbs Tonight!
I’ve found it all over my ranch along the river. Cultivated areas. I just call the Sherriff and send him the GPS location.
I figure one of my hands will get shot hunting a lost cow someday.
I don’t see prostitute wars being fought all over my country.
Upper Penninsua of Michigan.
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