Mexico's Struggle with 'Drugs and Thugs'
SWJ Book Review
by John P. Sullivan
Mexico's Struggle with 'Drugs and Thugs' (Full PDF Article)
Mexico is in the thralls of bloody drug wars. Last year these battles for profit and power cost an estimated 6,290 lives. So far this year, over 1,000 people have died as the cartels and their criminal soldiers seek dominance in the lucrative global narco-markets. These narco-conflicts are waged by cartels, gangs, paramilitary militias. The cartels fight at three levels: within their own enterprise for dominance; against other cartel alliances for market control; and against the security forces of the state (police and military) to fend off interference. Collectively this amounts to a virtual civil war fought by criminal netwarriors.
These netwars challenge Mexico and the cross-border region that embraces the frontier between Mexico and the United States with a series of interlocking, networked criminal insurgencies. Communities cower with fear against cartel reprisals and public debate is hampered by a lack of detailed understanding of the conflict and its players. This monograph, Mexico's Struggle with 'Drugs and Thugs', helps fill the knowledge void.
George W. Grayson is the Class of 1938 Professor of Government at the College of William and Mary, is a respected area specialist on Mexico. In addition to his long-standing academic focus, he is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an associate scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Grayson brings over a quarter century of experience to bear in this lean, yet rich account of the social and political dynamics underlying the current cartel conflict.
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Comments
I think the war against drugs won’t progress unless those people, companies, dealers and communities won’t move on their own and start fighting drugs in their family. If you can’t win against drug addiction on your own, then how dare you speak of defeating substance addiction in the whole world?
In a simple setup of user and dealer’s we a fan of celebrities and these celebrities are users of drugs which they are addicted to it, remember Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt they’re both drug users, but they overcome the addiction and now living peacefully imagine if a simple individual user or non-user’s would stand up and make the difference, then the fight won’t stop there but it will be heard of and may encourage other abusers of drug and alcohol to make a change and live their life without it.
I have a story of my friend where he started using alcohol in an early age of 13, we are both young and wanted to explore the world so I tried it too at first, it taste sucks, but later we enjoyed drinking alcoholic beverages and were not satisfied with that, we tried some other things aside from straightly drinking but now he can’t control his addiction and wants to change his life by going in an alcohol rehabilitation center here in Nevada.
Usually it happens in a single taste of drug and alcohol with their friends, then later on turns to be their addiction and sooner or later they will enjoy using that drug or alcohol on party activities and even encourage other people to use it too. It’s still possible to stop you from substance addiction, if you have the right goal, right mind and right attitude towards controlling that drug or alcohol addiction, then you can overcome that and you will be drug and alcohol free and enjoyed the life that you always wanted to have without drug and alcohol.
That is why rehabilitation centers are offering their hands to help fight addiction and change their view of life forever.