Report: City's cheap, illicit drugs lure Mexico buyers (Failed WOD)

Cocaine and heroin powder are cheaper and more abundant on the U.S. side of the border than on the Mexican side, which is leading to an increase in people from Mexico crossing over the border to buy the drugs in El Paso, according to an Office of National Drug Control Policy report.

Assistants of John Walters, the new director of the federal office, distributed the reports on drug trends for Texas while Walters was in El Paso this week. The June 2002 report includes a profile of El Paso County, with information about local trends.

It includes the surprising statement about the cheaper prices in El Paso drawing drug buyers from Mexico, but that part of the report sounds wrong to local experts.

Travis Kuykendall, director of the West Texas HIDTA, said: "We couldn't find anyone in local law enforcement who agreed that drugs are cheaper here than in Mexico. We traced the information to a (rehabilitation) center in El Paso ... this was provided by people they treat, not by law enforcement."

According to the report: "The dramatic price drop in El Paso powder cocaine and heroin (from $10 to $3 a 'hit') is a result of competition for the market by three different cartels."

"We are on the front lines of the battle against drugs," said John C. Kelley, U.S. Customs Service special agent in charge. "What worries me is how people are becoming calloused by this. When the drug czar was here, (someone) asked whether we had staged another drug seizure that occurred that day. Unfortunately, it's an everyday occurrence here."

Other information about patterns in drug smuggling and abuse in the region included in the drug policy office report included that:

Heroin purchased in El Paso during 2000 was on average 50.8 percent pure, and its use is spreading to rural areas, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. "While injection is the most common form of heroin administration, snorting has increase in El Paso. Mexican brown and black tar heroin are the predominant forms," the DEA said.

Some smugglers who travel by bus regularly between El Paso and Los Angeles also transport crack between the two cities. This results in some of El Paso's crack supply coming from California and not Mexico.

El Paso International Airport, Interstate 10 and rail companies are exploited by narcotics entrepreneurs. "An extensively interconnected commercial and social infrastructure in El Paso and Juárez ... provide drug-trafficking organizations with innumerable methods of "masking" their illicit trade," the report said.

El Paso is a hub for drug distribution and money laundering systems, and generates the largest marijuana seizures in the country. In a sight that's become all too familiar to people who live on the border, U.S. Customs Service officers recently seized 2,111 pounds of marijuana in a hidden compartment of a 1986 International truck at the Bridge of Americas.

To the eye, the truck was "empty," but the marijuana didn't get past the nose of Colby, a drug-sniffing canine working alongside U.S. Customs officers at the border.

Francisco Villegas Rodriguez, 32, of Juárez, was arrested on drug smuggling charges in connection with the June 22 seizure. It was just another typical El Paso case, officials said.

The report also said that El Paso County reported 77 drug-related deaths in 2000, 78 in 1999 and 70 in 1998. While in El Paso, Walters said the Bush administration proposes to spend $3.8 billion on prevention and treatment, some of which will be channeled to community-based programs in the form of grants.

People like Yolanda Tapia, Aliviane's deputy director for Youth Services, routinely sees the consequences of the drug war in the course of her work. She is considered a national expert on using families as cornerstone for preventing and treating drug abuse.

She oversees a research program that began with a 1998 grant for Aliviane called "Dando Fuerza a la Familia" (Strengthening the Family), a 14-week session that brings together parents and guardians who abuse drugs, their children and experts.

"We just had a graduation on Thursday for the families who completed the latest session," she said. "The whole point is keep children from following in the same footsteps of adults who abuse drugs."

The program includes training on communicating, social skills for children, building bonds for healthier family relationships. This year, 70 families took part in the program, and another 70 were observed for how they developed without the program. "We've had parents who never interacted (in meaningful ways) with their children until the program, and parents who used to spend the money on drugs who, for example, took their children to Western Playland for the first time."

Before Walters left El Paso, he said, "We can change the dimensions of this problem for generations to come if we do what every civilized society needs to do and that is take care of its children."

Yes, I think the report is correct. Presedente Fox and the other Mexican drugs lords have very strict economic regulations against re-importing drugs into Mexico. There are heavy surcharges and, of course, the Mexican police will kill you.

If they allowed drugs to get cheaper in Mexico, then many of the mules would stay there, rather than carry a few kilos north across the border, under the protection of the Mexican military and police. Hey, the PANistas didn't wait 70 years to get into office to allow some peons to skunk them out of their cut of drug profits.

"Cocaine and heroin powder are cheaper and more abundant on the U.S. side of the border than on the Mexican side..."

When the drug known as alcohol was illegal, the black market suppliers raked in the dough. Nowadays, the black market suppliers of the currently illegal (but widely available) drugs are also raking in the dough.

The drug known as alcohol is sold in stores on practically every corner, with huge blinking neon signs that say "Liquor"!

What would Elliot Ness think if he saw that this was the result of the War On Alcohol?

The TAX STAMPS on each bottle of liquor show that the government can legally reap the rewards of human drug consumption!

When will people wake up and realize that by legalizing drugs, charging a tax - exactly like alchohol and the drug known as nicotine, and enforcing age requirements, the black market wither and die?

It would also be refreshing to see the demise of the 'no knock' storm troopers!

Walters said the Bush administration proposes to spend $3.8 billion on prevention and treatment, some of which will be channeled to community-based programs in the form of grants.

Taxpayer money ---us poor taxpayers must pay for a failed WOD that costs us billions but doesn't work at all and then turn around and pay for programs that give our money to those who choose to use drugs. Maybe we'd be better off if the government got out of drugs all-together or ran it like alcohol like you suggest and tax them. Let the drug users be taxed.

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