Pubdate: Sun, 03 Jun 2012
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2012 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Steve Lopez

HERE'S A DRUG CONNECTION THAT EVERYONE IGNORES

Little Thought Is Given in U.S. to Violence Consuming Mexico

Illegal drugs by the tons are smuggled into California each year by 
sea, by land and by air. Cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine and 
heroin are either produced in or pass through Mexico, where 50,000 
people have been killed in the last six years in an escalating war 
among cartels. Some of the victims have been beheaded, mutilated or 
left hanging from bridges, not necessarily because of their 
involvement in the trade, but as a diabolical demonstration that the 
drug lords will stop at nothing to dominate the market.

Those drugs end up in every neighborhood in Southern California and 
every city in the United States, feeding a never-ending hunger. But 
few people north of the border seem to make the connection. The 
Mexican carnage is conveniently distant. It's Mexico's problem, not ours.

When a 24-year-old Echo Park illustrator and recreational drug user 
goes to a warehouse party or a dance club, she told me, cocaine, 
Ecstasy and other drugs are always available and often used openly. 
Given the horrific stories from Mexico, I wondered if the price of 
those drugs is ever a consideration.

"I do definitely realize that I have a connection to it, and it's 
sad," said the illustrator. "It's one of those things I'll try not to 
think about. It'll cross my mind and I'll push it out."

In 2011, the Los Angeles Police Department seized 11,378 kilos of 
cocaine, 3,426 kilos of marijuana, nine kilos of heroin and 304 kilos 
of methamphetamine, along with $16.3 million in suspected drug money, 
according to the department.

When you walk through the terminals at LAX, not everyone is carrying 
toiletries, socks and underwear in their suitcases. Several million 
dollars in cash was seized last year, officials said, much of it 
stuffed into luggage carried by couriers who were transporting drug payments.

In April, yet another panga boat was spotted off the coast of Malibu, 
and the Coast Guard took custody of three men and 80 bales of 
marijuana, which were valued at $1.6 million. Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement officials said that bumped the stats, since last October, 
to 51 arrests, with 14 panga boats and 11,000 pounds of marijuana seized.

But those busts and others never seem to nick the operations of the 
staggeringly rich and powerful cartels, nor do they do much to stem 
the availability of drugs or the insatiable demand by everyone from 
occasional recreational users to hard-core, seriously diseased addicts.

The drugs pouring into California don't all stay here, of course. 
Greater Los Angeles serves as a distribution point for drugs that get 
shipped through the nation. But we get our hands on a piece of the goods too.

"On the Southside, you'll see them slinging it in the streets. In 
Hollywood, it's in clubs or behind closed doors and you and I will 
never see it," a ranking officer in the LAPD's Gangs and Narcotics 
Division told me. "On the Westside it's the same thing, and we can't 
do any enforcement unless someone picks up the phone."

In some places, like skid row, there are no mysteries as to where the 
drugs are. On countless occasions, I've seen people selling, buying 
and using, and once watched a woman die of a heroin overdose on her 
way to the hospital. In other neighborhoods, the action is only 
slightly less concealed.

"It's ridiculously easy" to find drugs in the San Fernando Valley, a 
48-year-old recovering cocaine addict named Josh told me.

Find a motel or liquor store near a row of apartment buildings in a 
so-so neighborhood, he said, go into the nearest alley, and someone 
will appear, asking if you want anything.

Josh got clean 15 years ago, works in construction and now tries to 
help other addicts keep from losing jobs and driving away loved ones, 
as he once did.

When I called the Cocaine Anonymous help line in the Valley, it was 
Josh who answered, and he offered suggestions on the many meetings I 
might attend to learn more.

"Every single walk of life you can imagine is covered in the 
meetings," said Josh. "As a matter of fact, at one meeting I go to 
there's a lawyer, a podiatrist, there's another lady who's a 
nurse.... All races, male, female, it doesn't matter." He sees lots 
of musicians, he said, as well as people in the entertainment 
business who work both behind and in front of the camera.

The cartels "wouldn't be in business without us," Josh said of drug 
addicts. But as for there being blood on the hands of those whose 
business is fought over by gangs that torture, kill and terrorize, he 
said he wouldn't go that far.

"Indirectly, yeah," there's a connection. "But directly, you're 
talking about Mexican Mafia-type people. They're going to do what 
they're going to do, regardless."

Maybe so, but I don't think it's that easy to wash our hands of any 
responsibility.

I recognize that any serious addict has a disease, and a chemical 
craving that can't be cured by an appeal to conscience.

But I'm appealing to the greater, collective conscience.

It's time to examine why we've built such a culture of addiction - 
whether the devil is alcohol, tobacco, prescription drugs or illegal drugs.

It's time again to question every aspect of U.S. drug policy, and to 
consider a heavier reliance on prevention and treatment, with fewer 
resources thrown at the impossible task of cutting off the flow of 
drugs by land, sea and air.

Fifty thousand neighbors have been killed, many of them savagely.

That's almost equal to the number of U.S. soldiers killed in the Vietnam War.

In Mexico, many of the dead were innocent victims of our cravings, 
and they are not done digging graves.
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