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US Experts Weigh in on Mexico Drug War
 Tyler Wing - kvoa.com
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April 02, 2010
Tucson - The only thing separating southern Arizona from a drug war that's killed an estimated 14,000 people since 2006 is the Mexican border.
Two theories as to what's fueling the bloodshed and what will stop it, is examined in the weeks Four on the Border investigation.
"The more of the fence they put in the more people were killed," says American Border Patrol's Glenn Spencer.
Spencer says he's convinced Mexican cartels are killing each other and police over diminishing drug-smuggling corridors ever since sections of border fencing started going up four years ago, "If we finish the fence, we would stop drugs coming into the United States and we would cut off the funding for the cartels. And this might well save Mexico."
"The drug trafficking organizations are not fighting over control of the corridor," says Drug Enforcement Administration's Asst. Special Agent in Charge Anthony Coulson. "Last year that was the case."
Coulson says violence spiked once the Mexican government declared war on the drug cartels. He says that's when the cartels began fighting back, "By killing, kidnapping, shooting police officers or threatening to kidnap shoot or kill them and their families."
He says what's fueling the violence today is a cartel power struggle left in the wake of drug-lord Arturo Beltran's death. He was killed by the Mexican navy two months ago.
"What we have going on is a purging of what's left in the Beltran organization," says Coulson.
"They're killing each other right now in Mexico and there's a drug war because they still have something to fight over," says Spencer. "If we were to plug it (the border) entirely, they would just have to give up."
American Border Patrol reminds tax payers that the Secure Fence Act of 2006 authorized 700 miles of double re-enforced border fence to go up.
Spencer says to date, only 33 miles are built, "You could walk right through it. When you install the right kind of fencing it stops drugs and it stops people."
"Our ability to consume drugs is driving this," says Coulson.
He says stopping the drug war goes much deeper than building a fence.
Coulson says helping people addicted to drugs should be a top focus, "So they'll produce and continue to produce because we don't make that investment of fixing the people of this country."
He says in other words, demand will control supply, "I hope that we can get there but it's going to take a long time for us to dig this out."
To learn more about American Border Patrol, click here.
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