As she sat on her couch looking back at me, she wipes the tears from behind her glasses and tries to tell me about the night her youngest daughter of 18 years was suddenly and violently taken, never to be heard from again.

Her trembling hands and shaking legs speak volumes of the pain she suffers day-in and day-out, wondering about the fate of her little girl. “Is she alive? Is she dead? Is she cold and hungry? Have they hurt her? If they did kill her, where is her body?” These thoughts race through the grief stricken mind of this single mother a hundred times a day.

Consuelo (not her real name), a 49 year-old mother of four, can hardly speak her daughters’ name before her face flinches with pain and her eyes fill with tears again. “Today is my baby Paula’s 20th birthday [not her real name either]. It’s been over two years and we’ve heard nothing.” With a breath of exasperation, frustration, and more than a hint of resentment she exclaims, “And no one has helped us. No one.”

As horrific as this sounds, this story has been played out hundreds of times in the last five years all across the U.S./Mexican border. Sometimes it ends with the return of the loved one, in some cases alive but in most cases not. Sometimes, like in Consuelo’s case, it never ends. (more…)

That statement ought to be a wake-up call for every citizen and politician in America today. Even though the mainstream media has only recently pounced on this statement, you should know that it has been posted on the DEA website since 2005 where I found it while researching my “Drug Wars” documentary. The “greatest organizational threat” the Department of Justice is referring to are the men who make up the four primary cartels operating in Mexico and the United States today: the Gulf cartel, the Sinaloa cartel, the Juarez cartel and the Pacific cartel.

Now, it is important to understand that these organizations are primarily in the business of selling narcotics. You have to look at this the way they do—it’s like any other multi-billion dollar business, in that it seeks to make a profit on the manufacture and distribution of goods. The making, growing, selling, and delivery of their products are all part of their internal operations. Pretty much everything else they do is ancillary operations to support that end, and those are the operations they outsource. That includes most of their dirty work—the collections, kidnappings, torture, and assassinations—which they contract out to paramilitary gangs,which are put together piecemeal or recruited directly from gangs such as MS-13, los Zetas, and others. (more…)

In times past there was a prevailing wisdom that the violence stemming from the drug war equated to just one drug dealer killing another and after they finished killing each other off, things would go back to being peaceful and all would be well— this theory is no longer valid. The escalated violence and corruption the cartels are exhibiting today are quickly eroding Mexico and its democratic institutions to the point that they have caused a serious shift in the entire geopolitical landscape and represent the greatest threat to national security to both the U.S. and Mexico.

One of the more disturbing aspects of the narco-insurgency in North America is the effect it is having on the free press in Mexico. Our own history has proven that exposing the truth in a free press has done more for positive change in government and corporate accountability in our nation than perhaps any other single component, but that simply does not fit in the world of terror that the narcos create and perpetuate. Hardly a single Mexican media outlet in the country operates freely and without fear when it comes to reporting on the narcos and their activities. (more…)

I believe it is long past time to end the War on Drugs.  That’s not because I approve of drug use nor have any desire to encourage it.  But this particular war has already gone on longer than the ones in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, put together, with no end in sight and far less to show for it. 

I would not only decriminalize drug use, I would give it the same legal status as tobacco and alcohol, and with the same age restrictions.  For one thing, this would provide a great source of new tax revenue.  Also, it would free up jail space for non-drug related crimes.

With the legalization of drugs, the profits that currently accrue to dealers, who use a portion of their ill-gotten gains to pay off politicians, judges and corrupt cops, could go to American companies and American workers.  (more…)