Do Drugs and the money they create, corrupt a society to the point that it becomes a Narco State?
I ask because the news from Mexico's drug war is getting increasingly bad ..... a mass grave discovered in Mexico, contained the bodies of 18 kidnapped tourists. They were seized by a drugs gang, although it may have been mistaken identity and their deaths bring the total to more than 28,000 people who have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon began deploying troops to take on the traffickers. If the killings continue to increase at the current rate, that total will rise to about 75,000 by the time the government's term in office ends in December 2012.
This map, shows just how powerful Mexico's drug cartels have grown, with at least a billion dollars of US money coming over the boarders, and enabling the traffickers able to buy the very latest in weapons from the gun dealers in the US ..... see there is a trade of sorts.
Columbia is also discovering that drug lord money can corrupt even the law officials.
Police in Columbia became suspicious of what was happening at the National Narcotics Office, after drug traffickers were found to be in possession of properties, which had officially been seized by the National Narcotics Office, the agency that was supposed to seize assets from drug traffickers .... it was found that in at least one instance the person put in charge of managing the property seized from an infamous drug dealer, had links to the dealer's cartel.
Colombian Minister of Justice German Vargas Lleras said he had ordered the intervention after "hundreds of irregularities and many serious anomalies" had surfaced at the National Narcotics Office, with over 100 of its contractors dismissed.
I am increasingly supportive of calls for drugs to be 'legalised' as government monopolies, with the price and marketing set at about that for cigarettes .... because the misery and cost experienced by poorer countries to try to stop drugs being provided for the Western (US/European) market is far in excess of that being suffered by those Western consumer countries.
The point about the drugs trade is that its demand led ..... if the West wasn't producing millions of addicts, who are rich enough to buy the drugs, then the drugs trade would cease ..... it's this demand in the West, that fuels the drug trade, from supplier states such as Columbia and Afghanistan (where it funds killing our troops), through the route states such as Mexico, Turkey, Pakistan, and finally to the drug markets of the Western cities.
It is therefore up to us to find some way of breaking the trafficking cycle, but surely not with the blood of innocent Mexicans, and Colombians?
I ask because the news from Mexico's drug war is getting increasingly bad ..... a mass grave discovered in Mexico, contained the bodies of 18 kidnapped tourists. They were seized by a drugs gang, although it may have been mistaken identity and their deaths bring the total to more than 28,000 people who have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon began deploying troops to take on the traffickers. If the killings continue to increase at the current rate, that total will rise to about 75,000 by the time the government's term in office ends in December 2012.
This map, shows just how powerful Mexico's drug cartels have grown, with at least a billion dollars of US money coming over the boarders, and enabling the traffickers able to buy the very latest in weapons from the gun dealers in the US ..... see there is a trade of sorts.
Columbia is also discovering that drug lord money can corrupt even the law officials.
Police in Columbia became suspicious of what was happening at the National Narcotics Office, after drug traffickers were found to be in possession of properties, which had officially been seized by the National Narcotics Office, the agency that was supposed to seize assets from drug traffickers .... it was found that in at least one instance the person put in charge of managing the property seized from an infamous drug dealer, had links to the dealer's cartel.
Colombian Minister of Justice German Vargas Lleras said he had ordered the intervention after "hundreds of irregularities and many serious anomalies" had surfaced at the National Narcotics Office, with over 100 of its contractors dismissed.
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| The Heavily Guarded German Vargas Lleras |
I am increasingly supportive of calls for drugs to be 'legalised' as government monopolies, with the price and marketing set at about that for cigarettes .... because the misery and cost experienced by poorer countries to try to stop drugs being provided for the Western (US/European) market is far in excess of that being suffered by those Western consumer countries.
The point about the drugs trade is that its demand led ..... if the West wasn't producing millions of addicts, who are rich enough to buy the drugs, then the drugs trade would cease ..... it's this demand in the West, that fuels the drug trade, from supplier states such as Columbia and Afghanistan (where it funds killing our troops), through the route states such as Mexico, Turkey, Pakistan, and finally to the drug markets of the Western cities.
It is therefore up to us to find some way of breaking the trafficking cycle, but surely not with the blood of innocent Mexicans, and Colombians?
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