Feds release 2011 southwest border drug war plan

By SFR

Today, the US Office of National Drug Control Policy released its official plan for continuing the war on drugs. Highlights: we love Mexican cocaine; Predator drones; twice the Border Patrol and an official "tunnel strategy."

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Each year since 2009, the ONDCP has released plans for combating narcotics in different regions.

Today, ONDCP released its 2011 plan--officially called the "National Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy"--for eliminating drug trafficking operations along the Mexico-US border in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

You can read all 100-plus pages by clicking here (pdf), but we've distilled it into a few bullet points:

  • "Illicit trafficking across the Southwest border"--of guns, drugs, money and people--"continues to be
  • a chronic threat to our Nation."
  • (because it's such a great source of income?)

  • A whopping
  • 90 percent
  • of all cocaine bound for US markets goes through "the Mexico/Central America corridor."
  • Even so, our relationship with Mexico has apparently "never been stronger"--perhaps because we're planning to fork over a hefty
  • $500 million
  • to help that Mexico fight the drug war.
  • The US
  • Border Patrol has more than doubled
  • in less than a decade, "from 10,000 in 2004 to over 20,700 today." Another 300 or so agents are slated for hiring before the end of the year.

  • So, what have they accomplished? In the past two fiscal years, feds in southwest border states have seized 60% more illegal currency and 30% more drugs than they did in the two years before. Which is nice.
  • At least they're not in the air: "For the first time, DHS now has
  • Predator Unmanned Aircraft

  • System coverage along the entire Southwest border
  • , from the El Centro Sector in California to the Gulf of Mexico in Texas." Using Predator drones on our own citizens? I'm betting on a lawsuit from the ACLU any day.
  • There's a US Bomb Data Center. Yeah. There is.
  • The US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives plans to open nine new offices along the Southwest border for a
  • recently embattled
  • program,
  • Project Gunrunner
  • , "as funding becomes available."
  • And now for some healthy messaging: "The consumption and production of illicit drugs along the U.S.-Mexico border
  • erodes societies
  • ,
  • endangers families
  • , and
  • provides illicit earnings
  • that fuel corruption, crime, and violence."

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