It's also very important in Latin America. If we can deal with the drug problem there, some of their strife there, it's less likely we have immigration problems here.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The war on drugs is not being won, and it continues to threaten stability and democracy not only in the Andes but throughout the Caribbean as well, where tiny police and military forces are outclassed by the sophisticated equipment in the hands of traffickers passing through the region on the way to their market in this country.
Colombia is in a risky position. They've got a peace process that's going nowhere, and a drug production problem that's skyrocketing.
Up to now we have faced external problems in an isolated fashion. One of these problems is precisely the drug trade and what has been the result? A very weak and fragile position.
It has become much more difficult to smuggle dangerous substances across our borders over the past three years, and this is creating real problems for drug traffickers.
By bringing about a rational drug policy, we'd be freeing up a lot of resources for real crime. Drug disputes would get played out with courts rather than with guns. So it would make this country a much better place overnight.
There needs to be more pressure on the Mexican government to stop the drugs and illegal immigrants on their side of the border instead of exporting them to the U.S.
I think it talks about that there needs to be some proactive attack against drugs infiltrating our culture.
After spending three years of my life looking into this, I am more convinced than ever that the U.S. government's responsibility for the drug problems in South Central Los Angeles and other inner cities is greater than I ever wrote in the newspaper.
What happened? The Country got sick of it and said, Enough is enough. And all over the Country we saw springing up community organizations determined to do something about this terrible menace of drugs.
The United States and Mexico are trapped - economically, culturally, politically and because of drug crime - in the same continent.