Mexico's Drug War - Page 47

A US judge has sentenced the former number two leader of the Tijuana drug cartel, Eduardo Arellano Felix, to 15 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to money laundering.

"Arellano's crimes had "terrible effects ... And for that, you should be ashamed" , US District Judge Larry Burns said on Monday.

Arellano Felix entered a guilty plea as part of a deal with prosecutors under which he also agreed to pay $50m.

He was arrested after a firefight with Mexican authorities in October 2008 and extradited to US a year ago.

He had initially pleaded "not guilty," but changed his plea in May.

His brothers Eduardo, Francisco Javier and Benjamin Arellano Felix are all serving prison terms in US.

(Reuters) - Nearly half of Mexicans feel drug-related violence has increased since President Enrique Pena Nieto took office in December, according to a newspaper poll released on Friday, heaping pressure on the president who vowed to tame the gangs and restore order.

The El Universal/Buendia & Laredo poll found that 49 percent of the 1,000 people questioned thought drug violence had worsened since December, up 9 points since February. A quarter of respondents felt security had improved while another 25 percent thought it had remained steady.

The survey makes for mixed reading for Pena Nieto, who came into power vowing to break with his predecessor's military-led tactics and put an end to Mexico's vicious drug war.

Nearly 80,000 people have died in drug-related killings since former President Felipe Calderon sent in the army to quell the powerful drug bosses, a policy Pena Nieto has criticized but found tough to break with.

Pena Nieto has said he wants to take a different tack, lowering crime by targeting kidnapping and extortion.

But earlier this week, Pena Nieto scaled back plans for his flagship security measure, a militarized police force, or gendarmerie, that he hoped would gradually take the place of the army in the conflict.

Pena Nieto had spoken of a 40,000-strong force, but it has now been cut to 5,000, leading some to question how different Pena Nieto's drug policy is from Calderon's.

On April 30 2013 07:04 TheRealArtemis wrote:



A kilo of coke have a net value of $98.000 dollars... O_o Im clearly in the wrong line of business..Jokes aside, its icredible to see hoe much they earn on dealing drugs. but im surprices to see how little the colombians take for their coke..$2000 and the mexicans get $100.000 from it..But then again, they take all the heat from the military etc.

There is no disputing that Mexican cartels are operating in the United States. Drug policy analysts estimate that about 90 percent of the cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine on U.S. streets was trafficked by the cartels and their distribution networks in Mexico and along the Southwestern border. DEA officials say they have documented numerous cases of cartel activity in Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta.

But analysts who study drug trafficking scoffed at the idea that the violent cartels and other Mexico-based drug organizations are operating in more than 1,000 U.S. cities.

“They say there are Mexicans operating here and they must be part of a Mexican drug organization,” said Peter Reuter, who co-directed drug research for the nonprofit Rand think tank. “These numbers are mythical, and they keep getting reinforced by the echo chamber.”

The NDIC’s former chief defended the work of his former agency. “It doesn’t surprise me that the DEA doesn’t support those numbers,” said Michael Walther, who ran the agency from 2005 to 2012. “They like to paint a more positive portrait of the world. I stand by the work that our analysts did at NDIC.”

Drug policy analysts said the wide dissemination of the number is part of a pattern in the decades-long “war on drugs” of promoting questionable statistics in an attempt to quantify the drug problem in the United States and justify budgets.

“Washington loves mythical numbers,” said John Carnevale, a former drug policy and budget official who served three presidents and four “drug czars” at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. “Once the number is out there and it comes from a source perceived to be credible, it becomes hard to disprove, almost impossible, even when it’s wrong.”

The NDIC closed in June 2012 after 19 years of operation and more than $690 million in taxpayers’ money spent. But the NDIC number lives on, cited in congressional reports on security along the southwestern border and in testimony by high-ranking members of the military and key lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Mexico is a fragile point, as President Enrique Peña Nieto, who is in his first year in office, knows well. I fear that much of the progress I have seen since I moved here will be undone.

The violence is mostly drug related. The drug business for Mexico represents around $50 billion, according to some sources. Obviously, no one knows the full extent. That's a lot of money, more than tourism and remittances, which are two basic sources other than oil for the entry of foreign currency into Mexico. How is that money used? Payoffs to police and politicians perhaps, payoffs to border guards perhaps, saved in tunnels and safe houses for future use and, of course, the purchase of weapons principally from the US. What we do know is that the "drug war" has claimed 60,000 lives in Mexico since 2006 alone.

The drug business won't disappear as long as drug users use. Assuming that we cannot stop drug use, the best solution may be to get that money into the formal economy. How, I do not know, nor do I wish to express an opinion on the legalization of drugs, but I do know that if that money could be saved legally, most of the corruption would disappear. How to reduce the violence, prompt the drug cartels to compete on quality and service and other commercial strategies for success, rather than fight over territories and routes through the US. It's easier said than done, and I don't have a plan to propose, but it seems unlikely any government can "win" a physical fight against the cartels.

Many poor young people now see the drug business as their only real employment option. The official minimum wage in Mexico is just over (US) $5 dollars a day. One solution is to force multinational companies to pay something similar to their workers in Mexico as they pay their workers in their country of origin. Some might argue that would cause businesses to flee to China, but I'm not convinced. I was once a product manager at a Mexican based multinational company. I can clearly remember the stack of products now packed and lined up outside of the plant. Each product of the first row of stacked products was sliced many times. I was baffled until I was informed that the products were sliced by the workers as they left the plant. What is the real cost savings for multinationals paying these low wages?

AYUTLA DE LOS LIBRES, Mexico -- There on the cement town plaza, villagers led the two presumed extortionists over to government police. A band of farmers with old hunting rifles and machetes made sure the pair didn't get away

Three hundred eyes watched as the detainees were led to a truck. A wind was picking up and the official overseeing the handover wanted to leave quickly before the tropical storm. But the men in ripped shirts and worn sandals blocked his path and yelled, one by one. Why could the government not stop drug gangsters? How could he allow organized crime?

"The Mafia demanded 500 pesos ($50) a week from me," said a mechanic in a stained straw hat.

"My daughter was raped and abducted," said a farmer who had sold his wedding ring to pay ransom. "She was 17. You’re not doing your job."

The official looked down at his feet, which, unlike the ones around him, were shod in shiny leather. Mumbling, "Si, there are some bad people," he spotted an opening in the crowd and sprinted to the waiting truck. The driver hit the gas. A crimson-faced man bellowed after them, "You better not free them. We don't allow criminals here.''

Across Mexico, civilians like those in this southern town are taking the law into their own hands, fed up with the terror sown by organized narcotics groups. Peasants are riding shotgun in pick-up trucks. They chase SUVs with tinted windows, and lock the occupants in dank rooms. It's estimated nearly half of Mexico's 31 states have seen some form of citizen militias, from up toward the border with the U.S., and down to the Pacific coast.

The “war on drugs” has failed to curtail the $350 billion annual trade in illegal narcotics over the last 20 years as the price of drugs has declined while potency has increased, according to study results released this week.

The prices of heroin and cocaine, for example, have decreased by 81 percent and 80 percent respectively in the United States between 1990 and 2007, despite increasing law enforcement efforts to disrupt drug supply, research published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal Open showed.

The study said marijuana seizures in the U.S. increased 465 percent between 1990 and 2009. During the same period, though, the average inflation-adjusted prices of pot decreased by 86 percent, while the drug’s potency increased by 161 percent.

“Organized crime has really overwhelmed law enforcement's best intentions to reduce the availability of drugs,” Dr. Evan Wood, a co-author of the study from the University of British Colombia, told Al Jazeera America. “It (the study) really calls for a total rethink on how society deals with drug use and drug addiction.”

The U.S.-led war on drugs has increasingly come under fire in the United States and abroad, with critics highlighting the program’s negative impact on public health. And yesterday’s study shows that illegal drug use remains a major menace to community health and safety. The study’s authors suggested that governments assess the effectiveness of their drug policies by using indicators such as overdose rates and the rate of blood-borne disease transmission, particularly HIV infection.

“We should look to implement policies that place community health and safety at the forefront of our efforts, and consider drug use as a public health issue rather than a criminal justice issue,” Wood said.

The Organization of American States (OAS), in a report on drug problems in the Americas released last May, also emphasized drug abuse as a public health issue. The report calls for a public health approach to address the global drug epidemic. “The decriminalization of drug use needs to be considered as a core element in any public health strategy,” the study concluded.

MEXICO CITY, Mexico -- At least nine people were gunned down and six more were injured as shootings erupted across three Mexican cities where drug gangs are fighting turf battles, officials said Sunday.

Riding in on motorcycles at a bar in the resort city of Cuernavaca, gunmen opened fire, killing three young men and a 22-year-old woman, the Morelos state prosecutor's office said.

The attack near midnight Saturday also injured four people, who were recovering in local hospitals under police guard, a common practice when officials consider victims' lives still in danger.

In the northern city of Fresnillo, a group of armed men shot three people dead Saturday afternoon outside a convenience store. Federal and local police launched a wide search in the city of about 230,000 people that sits on a main drug trafficking route, but the attackers were still at large, the Zacatecas state attorney general's office said in a statement.

On October 03 2013 21:01 furymonkey wrote:
Well, apparently illicit drug use has been in a steadily decline, especially for the youth, so lesser demand could also contribute to the price drop.
Maybe the War of Drugs did succeed, whether it's due to the disruption effort or education it's hard to say, maybe it's both?

On October 08 2013 06:35 UdderChaos wrote:
When the money is being used in such brutality like that of mexico, I don't know how a moral human being can purchase drugs in good conscious. I know that clothing companies, and the like, are no saints because of sweat shops ect, but this is another level. Honestly if your reading this now and you smoke weed or w/e just please spare a thought of what your enabling to happen through your purchase :S. Props to anyone moral enough to only buy home-grown stuff ^^

On October 08 2013 06:38 Jormundr wrote:

GUYS YOU SHOULD LIKE BUY ORGANIC GRASS FED METH ONLY

On October 08 2013 06:40 UdderChaos wrote:

Hehe yeah pretty much

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A gunman in a clown costume shot and killed the oldest brother of one of Mexico's most notorious drug trafficking families in the resort of Los Cabos, authorities said on Saturday.

Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix, 63, a former leader of the Tijuana Cartel, was shot in the head late on Friday at a family gathering in the southern tip of the state of Baja California Sur, a spokesman for state prosecutors said.

"A person dressed as a clown took his life," he said.

Local media reported that the killer had two accomplices, but this was not yet clear, the spokesman said. The gunman fled the scene.

Arellano Felix spent nearly 15 years behind bars for drug-related offenses after his arrest in Mexico in late 1993. Extradited to the United States in 2006, he was later paroled and walked free on his return to Mexico in early 2008.

Another official working with state prosecutors said Arellano Felix, the oldest of the brothers who headed the gang, was not wanted by authorities at the time of his death.

On October 08 2013 06:35 UdderChaos wrote:
When the money is being used in such brutality like that of mexico, I don't know how a moral human being can purchase drugs in good conscious. I know that clothing companies, and the like, are no saints because of sweat shops ect, but this is another level. Honestly if your reading this now and you smoke weed or w/e just please spare a thought of what your enabling to happen through your purchase :S. Props to anyone moral enough to only buy home-grown stuff ^^

On October 20 2013 14:16 Sephy90 wrote:

You can't tell me what to do.

MEXICO CITY — A silver sedan sits in front of Bar Heaven in the Zona Rosa here, the nightclub district that serves the rich locals and foreign tourists. Inside is an investigator from the attorney general’s office, asleep with a clipboard on his chest. It’s not clear why he’s there, since the club has long been shuttered with police tape, the walls covered with memorial photos of the 13 young people who were abducted there five months ago, their decapitated remains found later in a grave some 30 miles away.

“Confidential,” the investigator growled when asked why his presence was required at the spot, which now serves as a landmark for the sadism and kidnappings that have long been associated with other areas. Drug-related violence that has claimed perhaps 70,000 lives nationwide over seven years has now arrived 15 minutes from the seat of the federal government.

The brutality at Heaven is the most glaring example of the bloodshed seeping toward the greater metropolitan area. Official figures released in July show that of the country’s 31 states, the one named Mexico surrounding the capital overtook all others in terms of homicides last year, with nearly 2,100 people killed. That’s about 18 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants — roughly on par with Chicago.

A growing local hunger for cocaine, marijuana and a host of other drugs normally transported to the United States has brought cartel spinoffs to the capital, which assassinate, mutilate and extort for control.

“We’ve seen the level of violence rise around Mexico City over the past four or five years, and it is related to retail drug trafficking,” said Jorge Chabat, a leading security analyst. “It’s a myth the drugs are only consumed in the U.S. There is a market here too.”

Working from a survey of drug users published earlier this year, analysts estimate that drug sales in Mexico City’s greater metropolitan area total about $1 billion a year.