The Fire Next Door: Mexico's Drug Violence and the Danger to America | United Liberty | Free Market - Individual Liberty

The Fire Next Door: Mexico’s Drug Violence and the Danger to America

Wed, 11/28/2012 - 2:01pm | posted by Jason Pye

Since the Mexican government initiated a military offensive against its country’s powerful drug cartels in December 2006, some 50,000 people have perished and the drugs continue to flow. The growing violence has created concerns that Mexico could become a failed state, and U.S. political leaders also worry that the corruption and violence is seeping across the border into the United States.

In his compelling new book, Ted Galen Carpenter details the growing horror overtaking Mexico and explains how the current U.S.-backed strategies for trying to stem Mexico’s drug violence have been a disaster. Boldly conveyed in The Fire Next Door, the only effective strategy is to defund the Mexican drug cartels by abandoning the failed drug prohibition policy, thereby eliminating the lucrative black-market premium and greatly reducing the financial resources of the drug cartels.

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Tagged: Caleb Brown Cato Institute Drug Cartels drug trafficking Drug War Mexico Ted Galen Carpenter War on Drugs

The Fire Next Door documents the human cost that the war on drugs is inflicting on Mexico and so many other countries. U.S. leaders need to understand that by insisting on waging that conflict they are expecting societies in the Western Hemisphere to accomplish the impossible. The primary beneficiaries of the current strategy are the violent, criminal drug cartels, who gain great financial resources that would otherwise be unavailable. Ted Galen Carpenter builds a strong case of a new, far more humane policy.”