Aiding Insecurity: Four Years of Mexico's Drug War and Merida Initiative - TransBorder Project: "After nearly four years of this collaboration with Mexico and three years of aid, is the U.S. more secure?
If measured by the security of our southern neighbors, then certainly not. If measured by levels of illegal drug consumption in the United States or in neighboring nations, certainly not.
The more relevant question, however, is whether U.S. national security was ever threatened by illegal drug consumption and illegal drug flows. The answer is certainly not.
America’s national security or homeland security has never been threatened in any fundamental way by the illegal drug trade. Undoubtedly, the drug trade has resulted in associated violence and crime, as well as in high levels of imprisonment and an array of social ills. But these are better characterized as public safety and public health issues rather than homeland or national security threats. ...
If the federal government began a process of legalization and decriminalization of illegal drugs, along with a new emphasis on treatment and health, the source of DTO profits and the incentives to enter the drug trafficking business would soon diminish along with the associated violence – even if the level of U.S. drug consumption would remain the same or even increase.
The Mexican DTOs don’t represent the main transnational threat to national security. Instead, the United States has a transnational threat of its own making – the drug prohibition policies that gave rise to these drug trafficking organizations in Mexico and elsewhere."
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