Whack-a-mole and Charlie Sheen: EDITORIAL: Calderon and Obama discuss the consequences of illegal drug use while Charlie Sheen brags of rockin' and rollin'

SENTINEL EDITORIAL: Calderon and Obama discuss the consequences of illegal drug use: "Consider that at the same time the Mexican president was visiting, the American news media were absorbed in what many seemed to think was a bigger story: the public disintegration of actor Charlie Sheen. In interview after interview, Sheen bragged and joked about his “bitchin’ rock star life,” and especially about the amount of drugs he has been using. “I’m proud of what I created. Why wouldn’t I be?,” he asked in one interview, where he bragged of probably taking more drugs “than anyone could survive.” Present company excepted, he apparently meant. He bragged that a month ago he was “bangin’ seven-gram rocks and finishing them because that’s how I roll. I have one speed, one gear ... go!”

Americans looked on, some laughing and many rolling their eyes.

But given the context, Sheen might as well have boasted of killing Jaime Zapata. The “rocks” he is so proud of consuming are crack cocaine. And more than half of the crack cocaine used in the United States comes here across the U.S.-Mexico border, spirited by the same drug cartels that Calderon and Obama are trying to put out of business.

Can we put all this together? We can’t admire our drug users, celebrities or not, or pity them and put the wealthy ones in rehab, and at the same time expect to end drug violence by sending billions of dollars to the Mexican police and military. The drug war won’t end until its absurdity is better understood by the Americans who are funding both sides — those who are employing the drug cartels to get high, and those paying a fortune in taxes trying to wipe them out." Keene (New Hampshire) Sentinel