Ciudad Juarez Mexico Suffers With Failed War on Drugs

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico is one of the most violent cities on earth. About 5,000 people have been slaughtered in Ciudad Juarez in the past 27 months. It is a destroyed city where 25 percent of the houses are abandoned and 40 percent of the businesses have closed. There were 2,600 murders last year and killings have increased this year.

Even though the Mexican government of President Felipe Calderon has sent a large number of Mexican Army troops into Juarez to assist local police in reducing violence, drug related violence continues to escalate. One major problem facing law enforcement efforts is that many politicians, army troops at all levels, and the police are on the drug cartel’s payroll. The huge sums of money controlled by the drug cartel are totally corrupting as they find their way into every level of society on both sides of the Mexican – United States border.

The U.S. approach to the killings in Mexico is to continue with the same failed policies of the War on Drugs. The US government never looks at an economic reason, just as the consequences of our free trade treaty (NAFTA) are never brought up. The effects wrought by NAFTA launched one of the largest human migrations in the world as poor Mexicans fled collapsing industry and agriculture. With NAFTA American corporations simply had a huge market for American crops and products, such as corn and chickens, as well as a source of very cheap labor. Border Patrol statistics show that the number of Mexicans entering the U.S. illegally skyrocketed within two years of the passage of NAFTA.

Even after 40 years of the war on drugs the American market has become the largest market for illegal drugs in the world. The war on drugs has actually brought larger amounts of higher quality drugs to the market at lower prices. The profits to Mexican drug cartels in supplying this market are estimated to be on the order of $30-$50 billion a year. The drug cartels have become stronger and more violent in defending and expanding this source of income.

In an America that allows other drugs, such as tobacco, alcohol, and an abundance of prescription medicine happy pills to be freely distributed the war on drugs such as marijuana and cocaine really doesn’t make any sense. One unintended consequence of the war on drugs is that America now has the largest prison population in terms of the percentage of Americans incarcerated of any nation in the world.

Many of those incarcerated are non-violent offenders who have been arrested for possessing small amounts of illegal drugs for personal use. The annual cost of housing low level nonviolent offenders in local, state and federal prisons is in the multi-billions of dollars. In an economy where local and state governments are struggling to meet expenses, the cost of incarcerating low level drug offenders is not inconsequential.

It really is time for the United States to take a realistic view as to how NAFTA and other economic factors play into the explosion of violence in Ciudad Juarez, and other Mexican and American border towns. The violence is no longer confined to just Mexico. Drug related violence is now a serious problem in many American cities as is the corruption that the flow of drug money brings.

For additional interesting information about why the war on drugs is such a failure, yet the American government refuses to admit that failure, take a look at this article about the consequences of the drug trade in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. and how drug related income has become so important to the Mexican economy as Mexican farming and business communities struggle under changes brought about by NAFTA.