Is that all you got from the article?
1) Certain policies were continued or begun while Bush was in office, and with his blessing. Who do you think should be blamed? 2) Since the demand for drugs is HERE, who do you think should be blamed? The people who bring them into this country? They don't create the demand.
You need to read the article more slowly.
"Of all the perversities of American drug policy, none is greater than the fact that the metaphorical War on Drugs has inflicted an actual war on some of the hemisphere's poorest people. The Bush administration's answer to the chaos in Mexico is something called the Mérida Initiative, which was signed into law this summer. The plan will provide $1.6 billion to the Mexican government, much of it for high-caliber weapons, night-vision goggles and air support - the kind of resources that the super-rich drug cartels already have in abundance. "We've had the same policy on drugs since the Nixon administration," says David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. "We ask other countries to fight the war for us. The same thing happened in Colombia. We try to export the problem by asking other countries to not sell us the goods we want to buy. Thousands are dying every year in Mexico for our war."
The article is dated November 13, 2008. The paragraph above contains the phrase "signed into law this summer", referring to Mérida Initiative, something which was strongly supported by GWB. It's the same mistake we made in Colombia. We're doing it again.
At this point in the discussion, you should agree to spend a week catching up on 20 years worth of drug war history. You're grasping at straws, attempting to sound knowledgeable. Your personality does not allow you to back down when you don't have enough knowledge. Now would be a good time to change that problem.
It's America's fault if we keep throwing money at methods which have had absolutely no effect in terms of reducing the availability of drugs. To date, **NOBODY** has shown data which suggests that our efforts are working.
Nobody gives a damn about drug use. What all sane mature adults want is for the violence to stop.
Busts like that have been happening at least since the 1970s. They are of no consequence in the bigger picture.
That hasn't been US policy in a long, long time, and I don't think it was ever practiced with Mexico.
Strickland said "beneficial". The only "beneficial" that's of interest in Mexico is cash. There is no way they're going to get excited about growing more vegetables when they can grow pot & opium poppies instead.
That idea has failed miserably in Colombia, which is why drug sellers have diverted their activity to Mexico. If you would read about the issue, you would know this.
Sure it is! The goofy lefty kooks in this NG believe everything was President Bush's fault, don't you know?
Except the tax RATE cuts for all Americans, including lowering the bottom tax RATE by one third from 15% to 10% and creating a tax system where nearly
49% no longer pay ANY federal income taxes as well as the thirty some percent of those that DO have taxes withheld, get a refund GREATER than the amount withheld, the beginning of federal funding for stem sell research, the most massive aid to Africa to stop the spread of AIDS, seven years of steady sustained growth in GDP, low inflation and interest rates, as well as the Dept of Homeland Security, no terrorist attracts in the US since 9/11 and of course the winning of the war in Iraq and creating a freely elected democracy, where the people ruled by dictators for over a 100 years, now vote at a rate double that of the US, capturing and/or killing hundreds, if not thousands, of the radical Islamic terrorists around the world that want to kill YOU. LOL
That's as impressive as a display of the enemy's captured weapons cache in a war.
Do you honestly think that 775 people constitute a big fraction of the drug distribution business in the LA area? Those people will all be replaced in a matter of weeks because there's too much money in the drug business. Sure, entry level positions pay only about minimum wage, but supervisors make 10x that much, and people can become supervisors in less than a year. And while 23 tons of narcotics (What's the breakdown? How much is meth or coke, now much is just marijuana?) seems liek a lot, why are the police in Minnesota boasting about 11 lbs. of illegal drugs? That sounds like public relations time for the police chief or sheriff.
If you want to know how successfully the war on drugs is being fought by government, look at the street prices for drugs because progress is being made only when prices go up. But when was the last time you heard of a shortage of illegal drugs? When a hurricane wiped out the crops? When Nixon was President?
BTW the biggest marijuana haul by the DEA occurred a few years ago in Phoenix, AZ, at a warehouse disguised as a furniture store. The landlord was the owner of Ultra auto parts, a shop located across the parking lot, and also the head of the sheriff's posse association (Sheriff Joe "America's Dumbest Sheriff" Arpaio), which was also headquartered on the property. The drug dealers thought the posse members were actual deputies and liked having them nearby to discourage burglars from breaking in and stealing their stuff.
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