THE US is known for the easy availability of illegal drugs and it is no secret that many, if not most, of those drugs are imported cross into the US from Mexico. The border between the two countries stretches 1952 miles, much of it across some extremely inhospitable land. It is, by and large, the perfect environment for smuggling just about anything but especially easily transported drugs. For years, the US has been putting the onus for control of cross-border trafficking on Mexico. In former times, much of the marijuana trafficked into the US was grown in Mexico and today drugs, including cocaine, produced in South America make their way to the US through Mexico. For the first time in a long time, however, the US is taking responsibility as the consumer of the drugs that have caused so much aggravation to Mexico. “Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade,” Clinton bluntly announced in Mexico City in her first visit as US secretary of state. She also spoke another obvious truth: guns smuggled across the border from the US into Mexico are the weapons responsible for the more than 7200 drug-related deaths in Mexico during the past year. All too often it is the country of a drug's origin that comes under the most virulent attack from the country most afflicted by that drug's abuse. Whether it is marijuana, hashish, heroin or cocaine, it is the countries that cultivate its primary ingredient that receive the most attention or, in other words, blame. It is difficult to see the causal connection between a heroin addict in New York and a poppy grower in Afghanistan. Just as a causal connection between a cocaine abuser in Paris and a coca farmer in Bolivia is tenuous at best. Neither the Afghan nor the Bolivian would be cultivating that particular crop were it not for the market that exists for it elsewhere. Stopping the flow of drugs is, indeed, one facet of battling drug abuse. But the real battle is closer to home, no matter where that home might be. It is the user. that must be dealt with first, otherwise, what is the incentive for the farmer to change his ways? __
