The Los Angeles Times has been presenting a series of investigative stories on the death and corruption in Mexico’s drug war. This latest piece asks various experts from Mexico, Latin America, and the US what they would do to help end the violence of the Mexican drug cartels:
Terry Nelson - Federal agent for 30 years with the U.S. Border Patrol, the Customs Service and the Department of Homeland Security
Despite the obvious failure of our drug control strategy, the public discourse surrounding this issue has focused primarily on continuing to wage the “drug war.”
We won’t be able to expand treatment and prevention efforts until we stop spending so much money enforcing ineffective penalties, building new prisons and buying fancy cars and helicopters for law enforcement agencies. As we begin to treat problematic drug use as a public health issue, it will become much easier to prevent the death, disease and addiction that have expanded under the criminal justice mentality of prohibition.
My years of experience as a federal agent tell me that legalizing and effectively regulating drugs will stop drug market crime and violence by putting major cartels and gangs out of business.
If what we’ve been doing worked at all, we wouldn’t be battling Mexican drug dealers in our own cities or anywhere else. There’s one surefire way to bankrupt them, but when will our leaders talk about it?
Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu – Mexican film director (“Babel,” “21 Grams” and “Amores Perros”)
I have always thought that the only possible way to eradicate this plague is to legalize drugs. While the United States keeps consuming these amounts of drugs and selling guns the way it does, there’s no way our country will win this war.
Once the tons of drugs cross the border into the U.S., there has to be a huge web of people involved in distributing and selling all these drugs. Where are these people? Who are they? Where are these “American cartels” and their leaders?
Fernando Rospigliosi – Former interior minister of Peru
The narco-trafficking problem in Peru has gotten worse in all aspects: the production of cocaine, violence and the corruption that comes from that. One of the aggravating factors was the launching of the [U.S.-financed] Plan Colombia, which started to work in the last decade and that has unleashed greater demand for Peruvian coca and cocaine. In addition, you have the increasingly strong entrance of Mexican cartels into Peru, and they have brought a kind of violence never before seen here.
Sergio Fajardo – Former mayor of Medellin, Colombia
The doors into the drug world are very wide for the unemployed and the youth living in the poor barrios. You have to close or reduce the size of that doorway. How do you do that? With opportunities, creating jobs in those barrios with education and by establishing the state’s presence in each community. We learned that many who entered criminality because they had no opportunity will return to society if they can go to work.
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