FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

AMLO Anti-Drug Policy Still Being Fought; Mexico and U.S. Must Adopt LaRouche 1985 Plan

Feb. 3, 2019 (EIRNS)——In his first two months in office, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has noticeably refused to move forward with the repeated calls by his own Interior Minister Olga Sanchez, a George Soros groupie, to legalize both marijuana and opium in the country, and her demand to negotiate a “peace agreement” with the drug cartels. That is partly due to the strong public opposition to drug legalization coming from the Trump White House. López Obrador has not said a word on the matter since assuming office, although during the campaign he favorably toyed with the idea.

However, on Jan. 30 López Obrador did respond to a question from a journalist about whether Mexico had captured any top crime bosses, by saying:

“We are no longer at war. We haven’t detained any cartel leaders because that’s not our principal function. The government’s foremost responsibility is to ensure public security; our strategy no longer includes capturing drug lords. There is officially no more war. We want peace, and we are going to achieve peace.”

How this battle inside Mexico shapes up will depend heavily on steps taken in the United States in the direction of Lyndon LaRouche’s groundbreaking 1985 fifteen-point plan for the war on drugs, in which LaRouche stated that “borders among the allied nations, and borders with other nations, must be virtually hermetically sealed against drug-traffic across borders.” LaRouche emphasized there what was also the central thesis of the 1978 Dope, Inc. study that he commissioned:

“A system of total regulation of financial institutions, to the effect of detecting deposits, outbound transfers, and inbound transfers of funds, which might be reasonably suspected of being funds secured from drug-trafficking, must be established and maintained. Special attention should be concentrated on those banks, insurance enterprises, and other business institutions which are in fact elements of an international financial cartel coordinating the flow of hundreds of billions annually of revenues from the international drug-traffic.”

In his 15-point war plan, LaRouche also emphasized the importance of advanced technologies to detect and destroy drug crops, processing labs, and distribution networks. The continuing relevance of that approach was underscored by last week’s huge drug bust of 254 pounds of fentanyl hidden in a truck attempting to cross the border at the Nogales, Arizona checkpoint, which was selected by agents for secondary checking, where drug-sniffing dogs found the deadly contraband.

As the Drug Enforcement Agency itself reported in their 2018 National Drug Assessment:

“The most common method employed by these TCOs [Transnational Criminal Organizations] involves transporting illicit drugs through U.S. POEs [Ports of Entry] in passenger vehicles with concealed compartments or commingled with legitimate goods on tractor trailers.”

According to Homeland Security’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection, they conduct “risk-based” screening only—i.e., they are able to screen only a small fraction of the 25 million containers entering the country yearly.