BROWNSVILLE (My San Antonio) — The Texas Department of Public Safety last month warned parents of Mexican gang recruitment and the Border Patrol is continuing a “scare and awe” campaign highlighting the risks, including torture and death, of cartel employment that seems to promise street status and easy money.
Laredo police have caught youths as young as 13 in cars full of marijuana still wet from the riverbank, he said, and the geography of the city is obvious enough to know where marijuana in that amount is coming from.
Customs and Border Protection officers in El Paso last March stopped eight juvenile drug smugglers, five of them U.S. citizens, with a total of 388 pounds of marijuana and 4.8 pounds of cocaine, prompting a news release warning that “traffickers will employ any and all types of people in their drug smuggling attempts.”
Since there’s no youth offender program in the federal courts, a 16-year-old caught trying to bring 200 pounds of marijuana over an international bridge will likely wind up in the state’s juvenile system, among thousands of cases heard each year by his county’s state district judges. Most records will be sealed.
Hey, young teen, likely black or Latino, has your mother or father been laid off recently? Do you need some money to help your family pay the bills in this economic downturn? If you’re lucky, maybe you can get a job at a fast food joint paying minimum wage. Maybe you can get some backbreaking field work. Or maybe you can “move a little product” and make twenty times the money doing one-fifth of the work of either of those jobs.
What do you think the border teen is going to choose? It’s a win-win for everyone involved; the teenager makes big quick money and keeps the bills paid for the family, the drug gangs get cheap labor to do the job that has the highest arrest risk and lowest correctional expense.
You know who doesn’t hire American teenagers to transport and sell their products? Beer, wine, and liquor manufacturers.
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[...] Mexican drug gangs recruiting teens along the border [...]
Eventually Texas legislators will be forced to do something about this black market tactic to use minors as store-fronts/distributors. Ultimately they will be forced to A)try minors as adults for drug related crimes(which is absurd. or B)Restrict and Regulate control of Cannabis to Adult markets so that any harms can be dealt with through education and taxes like gambling.(How many minors get into casinos?)
Good point with the alcohol comparison. Too bad so few of our “leaders” have the courage to speak out on this issue and admit the truth — prohibition causes more problems and crime.
Regulation should be our selling point, not legalization. The L word scares politicians out of their wits, if they have any. But anyone can advocate for regulation of something controlled by both foreign and domestic drug gangs, which reaps them massive profits for perpetuating their violent inroads into our once-peaceful nation.
Regulation = Control of North America’s #1 cash crop.
Control = Power to dismantle the drug gangs that threaten our society.