Friday, June 05, 2009

A sober look at the Mexican drug trade

Linda Diebel, a former Latin America bureau chief for the Toronto Star, has a sobering article up today on her blog Political Decoder. It's the story of how she learned the facts about the Mexican drug trade - and why she has no hope that it's going to be cleaned up any time soon.

Reading her account about how the trade will thrive because its too lucrative for both the dealers and the corrupt officials who benefit from it, I can't help but wonder why we believe that we're immune from that kind of corruption here in Canada. As we're seeing daily in Vancouver, our misguided attempts to control drugs by making them illegal only fuels the attraction of the business for the bad guys.

And while I don't believe that Canadian public officials are corrupt, one can't help but wonder whether the huge profits flowing to the gangs that control the business aren't finding a home in the pockets of the people we have put in charge of catching the bad guys.

Here's the link

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