Mexican society finds itself in a bloody war with the drug cartels that has taken more than 4,000 lives so far this year alone. The government of Felipe Calderón has launched a full-scale war against the cartels, which requires significantly more effort than the current U.S. collaboration to be successful.
The Mérida Plan provides helicopters and other support, but there are other more direct ways to help the Mexican government. One is to control the smuggling of arms into Mexico.
The cartels possess an extraordinarily sophisticated arsenal of firepower, fruit of smuggling arms in from the United States. Mexican authorities now face .50-caliber guns, grenade launchers, antitank missles, mortars and the like, all purchased on the US side of the border.
According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), there are 6,700 businesses between San Diego and the Texas Gulf Coast authorized to sell arms. Meanwhile, there are only one hundred ATF agents assigned to oversee them.
Efforts on this side of the border have been insufficient to halt this arms smuggling. As well, these efforts lack the high priority they should have, especially in view of how tightly this arms smuggling is linked with the entry of drugs into our country.
For years, Mexico has been accused of not doing enough to fight drug trafficking. But now Mexico is engaged in a full-scale war and the cooperation on this side of the border is not keeping pace with these developments. The U.S. government must be more aggressive in controlling the sale and traffic of arms into Mexico if the entry of drugs into our own country is to be stopped.
