Cartels sell their nation's soul

[grace]

THE big boys of the drugs trade make our Underbelly idiots look like they've been on Jenny Craig.

 

All the numbers are big: Mexico's Attorney-General said his country has spent $US6.5 billion in the past two years fighting the drug gangs.

 

The cartels will earn about $US15 billion this year; more than 6000 Mexicans will die in cartel warfare in 2009; Mexico has 130,000 standing soldiers, while the two biggest cartels are believed to have 100,000 between them; 24,000 Mexican soldiers are assigned to tackle the drug bosses; 5000 troops work in the town of Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso -- 250 people are murdered there each month.

 

Last month gunmen broke into a drug rehabilitation centre there, lined up 17 young men and shot them dead. It only just made the news.

 

The drug cartels openly advertise on street hoardings for government soldiers to defect to them. It's better pay and the kills are more regular.

 

Mexico is descending into nothing more than a narco-state supplying the demands of Americans who want to get high: in one dreadful weekend in Tijuana nine men were found decapitated; three were policemen, their badges found in their mouths.

 

Some months back a dozen soldiers were found, also decapitated, their hands tied behind their backs. Heads are rolled on to popular dance floors and tortured bodies turn up in school playgrounds.

 

It is all too much for some. Former Brazilian president Fernando Cardoso now sides with Australia's Wendell Rosevear and Seattle's Norm Stamper.

 

"The status of addicts must change from that of drug buyers in the illegal market to that of patients cared for in the public health system,'' he wrote two weeks ago.

 

He wants attention moved from repression of drug users and focused instead on treatment and prevention, the direction in which Portugal, the Netherlands, Italy, Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador had already moved.

 

Author: Alan Howe

date: 4 October

Source: Herald Sun 2009

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/cartel...f-1225782648380