Despite the grinding poverty
that afflicts millions of Mexicans, the nation of 100 million on the US
southern border has so far avoided a repeat of last century's Mexican Revolution,
a decade-long, multi-sided civil war beginning in 1910 that left two million
Mexicans dead. Part of the reason is the drug trade, a prominent
Mexican researcher told a Mexico City conference on drug use Sunday.
Nelia Tello Peon, professor
in the National School of Social Work at the National Autonomous University
of Mexico (UNAM), told the conference a social explosion has been avoided
because poor people have "found alternate ways of survival," including
migration to the US, working as ambulant vendors in the informal sector
of the economy and working in the drug trade. Peon criticized the
drug trade as an activity that "destroys or degenerates everything it touches,"
but added that "you cannot forget that the drug trade is fundamentally
a problem of the market."
Hundreds of thousands of
Mexicans participate in the drug traffic -- as peasant growers, middlemen,
drivers, warehousemen, pistoleros, accountants and money managers, among
others. Countless others benefit indirectly from profits generated
by the drug trade. But Mexico is also seeing higher rates of drug
use and abuse as some proportion of drugs in transit through the country
on the way north "fall off the back of the truck."
-- END --
|
Issue #241, 6/14/02
Federal Judge Issues Injunction Against California Cannabis Clubs | The June 6th Medical Marijuana Actions: One Week Later | With Competing Drug Reform Bills Passed, NY Governor and Assembly Have One Week to Reach Compromise | Border Governors to Discuss Chihuahua Marijuana Legalization | Dan Forbes Goes After Ad Age for McCarthyite Smear | London Borough Proposes De Facto Hard Drug Decrim | Philippines Enacts Death Penalty for Drug Dealing, Possession of a Pound of Marijuana or Tens Grams of Ecstasy | Colombian Paramilitary Leader Again Admits Links with Cocaine Traffic, Calls for Tactical Retreat from the Trade | Newsbrief: Mexico Drug Trade Helps Prevent Social Explosion, Says Researcher | Newsbrief: DARE Dropped in Toledo | Newsbrief: Maryland GOP Governor Candidate Talks Treatment Not Jail | Newsbrief: Supreme Court Ruling Leads to Public Housing Eviction for Son's Marijuana Pipe | Newsbrief: Addicts Vote with Their Feet on Vietnam's New, Lengthy Mandatory Drug Rehab | Newsbrief: Louisiana Judge Busted in Dope-Planting Scheme | Newsbrief: Life for Brownies? California Man Faces Three-Strikes Penalty | Grant Program: Tides Foundation RFPs for Latin America, Prop. 36 Implementation and Overdose Prevention | New DRCNet/StopTheDrugWar.org Merchandise Out -- Discounted Purchase Available | The Reformer's Calendar
|
This issue -- main page
This issue -- single-file printer version
Drug War Chronicle -- main page
Chronicle archives
|
PERMISSION to reprint or
redistribute any or all of the contents of Drug War Chronicle (formerly The Week Online with DRCNet is hereby
granted. We ask that any use of these materials include proper credit and,
where appropriate, a link to one or more of our web sites. If your
publication customarily pays for publication, DRCNet requests checks
payable to the organization. If your publication does not pay for
materials, you are free to use the materials gratis. In all cases, we
request notification for our records, including physical copies where
material has appeared in print. Contact: StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network,
P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 293-8340 (voice), (202)
293-8344 (fax), e-mail drcnet@drcnet.org. Thank
you.
Articles of a purely
educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of the DRCNet
Foundation, unless otherwise noted.
