Our Continuing Lost War On Drugs, May, 2013 Update

While we have spent a lot of the past few months talking about wasteful government spending, the many attempts by the political class to strip away Second Amendment rights, the continuing disaster that is Obama Care, and silly/stupid government programs and projects, the Mexican drug cartels have been very busy. They have been extending their political and geographic reach and have continued to enrich themselves as a result of our broken strategy on drug usage n this country.

Rather than conducting an adult, national discussion on our lost war on drugs and what to do about it, our political class has been too distracted to take on this issue that has resulted in trillions of wasted taxpayer dollars, damaged and destroyed lives of American citizens and the rise of some of the most violent criminal gangs mankind has ever encountered.

Thus, today’s post will review some of the latest activities of the Mexican drug cartels as they continue to get rich as a result of our lost war on drugs and continue to push their influence further from inside the United States.

1) According to a recent Univision investigation:

• One of the dominant Mexican drug cartels, Los Zetas, as well as the other Mexican drug cartels, who have dominated border drug smuggling operations into the United States traditionally used Mexican citizens to ferry illegal drugs across the border.
• However, lately, the overwhelming amount of drug trafficking arrests made by the U.S. Border Patrol and other government agencies are not of Mexican nationals but usually American citizens.
• Three out of four arrested for possession and trafficking of drugs at border posts have American citizenship, according to an analysis of official statistics obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) and Univision Investiga.
• These organizations looked at more than 80,000 cases of drug arrests by the Border Patrol and found that four out of five cases of drug trafficking on the border, in which several people are involved, involved at least one U.S. citizen.
• The investigators concluded that the drug cartels have gotten smarter with who they contract as mules to smuggle their illegal drugs into their U.S.
• According to one 54 year old American drug smuggler, in many cases “they (drug cartels) are looking for American people” who are “middle class” because this demographic is “less suspicious to the Border Patrol.”

Thus, the cartels continue to be a very efficient business organization, modifying their distribution means and methods as required to maximize their profits and operations. And they are now actively bringing American citizens into their criminal operations as opposed to their traditional approach of using Mexican nations.

2) Apparently Mexican drug cartel representatives, and the potential for associated violence, is not contained within Mexico’s borders. In testimony given to Congress regarding the proposed new immigration legislation, Sheriff Sam Page of Rockingham County, North Carolina had the following revelations for our politicians in Washington:

• Mexican drug cartels are active in his county despite its geographical distance from the border.
• “In the United States, our borders are not secure,” said Page, also a member of the leadership of the National Sheriffs Association, said.
• “As a sheriff in North Carolina who’s traveled to the border more than once, I’ve seen it myself and worked with officials there, I can’t understand why the representatives in Washington can’t figure it out. It’s not secure.
• "When drug trafficking cartels end up in Rockingham County, two to three days from the border, with weapons, drugs and money, and they’re housed up in our county, that concerns me. I am a border sheriff also, in North Carolina.”

The cartels are already here, in this country, possibly/probably in your state and possibly closer. And according to this sheriff’s expert opinion, Washington’s political class does not get the reality of the situation.

3) But this sheriff is not alone in his assessment that the cartels have landed. Consider an investigative report that the Associated Press reported on April 1, 2013:

• Mexican drug cartels are sending some of their most trusted cohorts to both live and work deep inside the United States to further the cartels' needs and marketing.
• This bolder presence is meant to tighten their grip on the world's most lucrative narcotics market and maximize profits.
• Law enforcement authorities believe the cartels' move into the American interior could make the cartel harder than ever to dislodge in the future.
• It will also pave the way for the drug gangs to expand into other criminal enterprises such as prostitution, kidnapping-and-extortion rackets and money laundering within the United States.
• An extensive Associated Press review of Federal court cases, government drug-enforcement data, and interviews with top law enforcement officials indicate the cartels have begun deploying agents from their inner circles to the U.S.
• Cartels are now suspected of running drug-distribution networks in at least nine non-border states, often in middle-class suburbs in the Midwest, South and Northeast.
• "It's probably the most serious threat the United States has faced from organized crime," said Jack Riley, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Chicago office, who is quoted in the AP report.
• The cartel threat looms so large that one of Mexico's most notorious drug kingpins, and a man who has never set foot in Chicago,was recently named that city's Public Enemy number One.
• Cartel cases involving cartel members have now emerged in the suburbs of Chicago and Atlanta, as well as Columbus, Ohio, Louisville, Ky., rural North Carolina, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania.
• Mexican drug cartels "are taking over our neighborhoods," Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane warned a legislative committee in February.
• As their organizations grew more sophisticated, the cartels began scheming to keep more profits for themselves. So leaders sought to cut out middlemen and assume more direct control, pushing aside American traffickers.
• Beginning two or three years ago, authorities noticed that cartels were putting "deputies" on the ground here.
• The Louisville Metropolitan Police Department arrested four alleged operatives of the Zetas cartel in November in the suburb of Okolona.
• People who live on the tree-lined street where authorities seized more than 2,400 pounds of marijuana and more than $1 million in cash were shocked to learn their low-key neighbors were accused of working for one of Mexico's most violent drug syndicates.
• The Texas Department of Public Safety reported 22 killings and five kidnappings in Texas at the hands of Mexican cartels from 2010 through mid- 2011.

Thus, it is pretty clear that actual cartel personnel are on the ground within this country and will continue to expand their influence going forward as Washington remains distracted with a myriad of other insignificant issues.

4) And how do we know that the drug cartels might bring their violence into the U.S.? Consider an article that ran in the March 29, 2013 issue of The Week magazine. A new study found that a quarter of a million guns worth about $127 million make their way into Mexico every year from the U.S.

It is highly doubtful that Mexican law enforcement and armed forces are ordering all of these weapons. Most of them are likely ending up in the hands of the cartels and are probably not intended for duck hunting. Eventually, these guns will make their way back into the U.S. via the in-country networks the cartels have been establishing. And that will not be good.

These are the ramifications of our lost war on drugs. Drug usage and abuse are still present in all of our communities but the outlawing of a wide range of narcotics and drug substances have allowed the criminal elements in the world to pick up the slack and fulfill the demand. Our war on drugs has created powerful, violent, and very savvy criminals that have moved into the heart of this country in so many ways.

Can we now have an adult conversation and find a way to compassionately take care of those citizens that truly need addiction help, move our limited resources to treatment, and away from incarceration, allow people to do what they want to do to their bodies as long as they do not endanger others, and start defunding the cartels with this current, failing strategy?

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