A reader retorts…That America is not solely responsible for the problems the Mexicans are having with the drug gangs. He cites the growers, official corruption and the Mexicans who smuggle the stuff into the States as bad guys. Fair enough.

     According to him, I am saying in my previous blog, “America is bad. American drug users are bad. American government (war on drugs) is bad. The poor Mexicans are just somehow unwitting pawns being manipulated by Bob the crack addict in Philly...” Then he asks, philosophically, “Which came first: the crack addict or the Mexican coca grower?”

     Well, the addict came first. He discovered how to abuse the drugs and created a market for them. Until then, hemp was only good for making rope, poppies were decorative flowers, and coca was a leaf Indians chewed in the South American rain forest. …And no one would even think of ingesting a product made from Drano and Sudafed.

     Don’t get me wrong. The drug gangs in Mexico and Central America are really dangerous, really evil characters who deserve whatever punishment the Mexican government can apply to them. At the same time, it’s a shame we have to bankroll them and thus financially support the narco-terrorism and murder along Mexico’s border with the United States.

Another reader remarks… “Speaking as someone who has been deep in Mexico many times, I think the crack addict came first. However, Mexico has been abysmally poor for my whole life, and all of that is the result of the population of Mexico making one dumb decision after another, starting about 1910. Their top down Marxist economy set them up for takeover by the drug lords. and when we put the heat on Colombia, Drug Central moved north. I no longer plan to retire there. Too bad.”

     I have to agree that Mexico has been a poor steward of its own national fortunes for the past 100 years. The end of the Diaz regime marked the beginning of a succession of revolutionary governments each of which did its bit in ruining the economy, allowing lawlessness and betraying the hopes of the very people who put them in power. This the Mexicans were able to do very much on their own, with minimal interference from the United States.

     Now Mexico is entering an era in which organized crime, in the form of the drug gangs, is threatening to take over effective control of the country. President Calderón is showing considerable moral and physical courage in taking on the narco trafficantes. Now if there was only some way we could reduce the “demand” side of the economic equation, to give our friends in Mexico the edge…

     We managed to export a big part of our drug problem to Mexico in the past few years when we made it much harder to acquire ephedrine and pseudophedrine cold medicines like Sudafed. You need a considerable amount to cook up a batch of crystal meth. But federal law has put these OTC medications behind the pharmacy counter. To buy them, you need to flash an ID and sign a log book --something would-be drug dealers feel shy about doing.

     The result has been a drastic reduction in the “mom and pop” meth labs here in the States, and the creation of “super labs” turning out "ice meth" on an industrial scale in Mexico. The ephedrine and pseudoephedrine is imported from India and China (or made domestically) and cooked in Mexican labs. The resulting “ice” is very pure, very potent, and highly in demand.

     Huge amounts of money are involved in the trade. A 2007 federal raid on one lab in the Chapultepec district of Mexico City –an upscale neighborhood at that—yielded $205,000,000 in United States currency. That was just one drug operation. The Mexican government is trying to restrict precursor chemical production, but that raid demonstrates that the drug gangs have all the capital they need to keep the trade up and running with only sporadic shortages due to law enforcement

According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, in their drug threat assessment for 2008, the problem with Mexican drug trafficking organizations is not staying south of the border: “Mexican methamphetamine distribution networks are expanding in many U.S. drug markets and have supplanted many local midlevel and retail dealers in areas of the Great Lakes, Pacific, Southeast, Southwest, and West Central Regions. Mexican DTOs have expanded their methamphetamine distribution networks, particularly in methamphetamine markets previously supplied by local distributors.

     “Law enforcement authorities in cities, including Akron (OH), Hannibal (MO), Dallas and Houston (TX), Mobile (AL), Nashville (TN), Oklahoma City (OK), Orlando and Tampa (FL), Pueblo (CO), and Richmond and Shenandoah (VA), report the growing prevalence of Mexican DTOs at all levels of methamphetamine distribution in their areas and a concurrent increase in the availability of ice methamphetamine. Furthermore, law enforcement reporting indicates that in some cities--including Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Fort Worth (TX), Memphis and Nashville (TN), and Oklahoma City--Mexican DTOs are exploiting their relationships with Hispanic and African American gangs as a means of controlling methamphetamine distribution at the midlevel and retail level."

     Looks like a whole new front has opened in the War on Drugs.