Newswise — Ron Mize, assistant professor of Latino Studies at Cornell University, and co-author of “Consuming Mexican Labor and Latino Immigrants in the United States,” comments on this week’s events in Monterrey, Mexico that claimed 49 lives in the country’s ongoing drug war.
He says: “Since Calderon assumed the presidency, the U.S.-Mexico joint-sponsored drug war has played out similarly to the 1980’s U.S. attempt to curtail the flow of drugs – a complete and total failure. If success is measured by curtailing the amount of drugs flowing to North American consumers and fewer people using illicit drugs, then the lessons to be gleaned over the past thirty years is more criminal sanctions and more military enforcement results in negligible successes at best.” “There is a reason why Mexico’s former president Vicente Fox is calling for the decriminalization of drugs and an end to his nation’s drug war. Treating the drug problem with increased militarization and criminality has only upped the stakes for the drug cartels that clearly value their lucrative trade above all else, even at the cost of 50,000 human lives.”
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