Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Grits for Breakfast

Criminal Law

: Grits for Breakfast

Stop Digging: US policies enriching Mexican drug cartels

By Gritsforbreakfast

When you find yourself in a hole, the saying goes, the first thing to do is stop digging. But when fighting Mexican drug cartels, US policy over the last several years has been to buy more shovels and hire laborers to make the hole deeper and wider.As Mexican soldiers engage in battles with cartel gunmen south of the border and Congress considers the Bush administration's $1.4 billion pork barrel anti-drug aide package, it's worth stopping for a moment to consider how we got here. It wasn't that long ago that the big drug lords lived in Colombia, and the Mexican "cartels" were regional smuggling operations that may have corrupt contacts in local police, but did not compete openly with the government for power.US policy, though, combined with international economic trends, have added several major new revenue streams to the cartels' business, enriching them beyond the imagination of the boldest observers at the turn of the century...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on March 07, 2008 (boomark / email).