Reporters Covering Mexico Drug Wars Risk Their Lives

ON ALERT: A federal agent guards the office of the newspaper El Mañana in
Nuevo Laredo in 2006 after an attack by men wielding assault rifles and grenades.

From The L.A. Times:

As violence has soared, more than 30 reporters have died or disappeared in Mexico since 2000, the group Reporters Without Borders says.

VILLAHERMOSA, MEXICO -- Rodolfo Rincon had reason to feel cheery when he left his newspaper office on a January evening last year.

His report on drug dealing in coastal Tabasco state had made a splashy, two-page spread that day in the Tabasco Hoy.

That night, Rincon, considered one of the best police reporters in the state, had put the finishing touches on a story about ATM thieves for the next day's edition.

He strode from the glassy newsroom and hasn't been seen since.

Read more ....

More News On Mexico's Drug Wars

Juárez slayings set record as cartels' drug war drags on -- La Cruces Sun News
Charred bodies dumped in drug gang-hit Mexico city -- Reuters
11 bodies found in Tijuana over 3 days -- LA Times
Six Charred Bodies Found in Tijuana as Drug Violence Escalates in Mexico -- Voice Of America
Drug war threatens free press -- In Forum
Opinion: Clarence Page: Don't forget the war next door -- Dallas News

My Comment: The Drug War has been going on for as long as I have been alive. With time I have come to realize that the drug war can only be defeated by defeating it at home. Like prohibition, we may have to come to some accommodation on providing products that a large segment of the population wants, and are willing to break the law for it.

Drug prohibition was not always the case in American history. Opiates, morphine, heroin .... even cocaine .... these products were readily available to the American public before they were outlawed. Morphine was the drug most in demand, a result of many soldiers becoming addicted to it after being wounded in the Civil War. The social cost for this widespread and legal addiction were horrendous on the American public .... a fact that made it easier to ban it years later.

If narcotics was to become legal today (with government being in control of its distribution) ... will the social costs become more than if it was not legalized. Looking at what America's needs are doing to drug producing countries like Mexico, Colombia, Afghanistan and others ..... I am starting to debate this with myself.