…the body count was back to zero, if only momentarily.

Earlier in December, Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora released some of the grim statistics from the ever bloodier drug war.

The number of gangland killings reached 5,376 from the beginning of the year until Dec. 2, a 117 percent increase over the 2,477 killings in the same period in 2007, Mr. Medina-Mora said in a luncheon meeting with foreign correspondents.  link

Ciudad Juarez has seen a fourth of these deaths occur on its streets.  Somewhere around 1,350 people have been killed, their deaths announced with music over the police radios, coroners overwhelmed with 15 to 20 cases a day, and 2009 will probably be no less dangerous for Mexico.

I hope that in 2009 we in the United States begin to understand the dangers posed by the continuance of this level and type of violence.  The responsibility for finding solutions is shared between Mexico and the United States.  We should be helping to fight corruption in Mexico’s government and police forces, corruption that paralyzes Mexico’s ability to fight back.  We must also do something to stop the flow of weapons into Mexico, ones that are legally purchased in the U.S. at gun shows or shops and driven across the border into Mexico.

I also hope the U.S. starts to own up to it’s own drug problem.  One hit at a time, U.S. drug users are filling the treasuries of organizations that are holding entire cities hostage fighting over the opportunity to deliver the goods to the jonesing gringos.  For the past three decades, the U.S. has pursued aggressive tactics that have made trafficking more difficult; driving up the price.  But the junkie will always need another one, and the dealer will always find a way to get it to them.  We should know by now that a new drug enforcement strategy will not work.  We need to begin a serious national discussion over a strategy of tolerance of certain activity as it relates to drugs, because tightening the grip has only made what we’ve tried to stop more powerful and sinister.

This year, like last year and many before it, hope is not enough.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Ben. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.