Mexico’s Calderon: US consumption fuels drug war

October 27, 2010 05:28
Mexico’s Calderon: US consumption fuels drug war

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has told the BBC the US should do more to reduce the demand for drugs that is fueling violence in Mexico.

BBC News.com

EXCERPTS:

Mr Calderon and his counterparts from Colombia and Costa Rica, Juan Manuel Santos and Laura Chinchilla, said legalisation of cannabis in California would send a contradictory message.

“It is confusing for our people to see that while we have lost lives and we invest vast resources in the drug war, in the consumer countries they promote proposals like the Californian referendum to legalise the production, the sale and the consumption of marijuana,” said Mr Santos.

“Our biggest wish for our region is development, but our biggest obstacle is this

Children of families fleeing drug violence at a Colombia soup kitchen

transnational organised crime, which knows no borders, poisons our youth and damages our people through extortion, kidnapping and murderous violence. It’s not possible to really face it effectively independently,” he said.

He reiterated his long-standing view that the problem of organized crime would remain as long as the US remained the biggest consumer of drugs in the world.

FULL STORY



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