Violent Mexican Drug Cartels

Violent Mexican drug cartels continue trafficking massive quantities of marijuana into the United States,

and each cartel reportedly earns up to $2 billion annually by pushing their drugs into America. It's been said

before and it will be said many times again, but something must be done to put a stop to the cartels. "Marijuana is

by far the most seized drug at the Southwest border, and it serves as the cash cow of the drug cartels in Mexico,"

according to Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Rusty Payne (Freedman, 2011). In fact the amount of

marijuana seized along the Southwest border has increased by 44% between 2005 and 2009, Payne reports

through the Beaumont Enterprise newspaper.

One positive step that should be taken to reduce the trafficking of thousands of tons of Mexican marijuana

across the U.S. - Mexican border each year is to dramatically diminish the American demand for Mexican

marijuana. Legalizing the drug in the United States could accomplish that. Legal marijuana would seriously cut

into the violent drug cartels' profit machines, and could potentially raise billions in tax revenues that the U.S.

sorely needs to reduce the multi-trillion-dollar federal deficit and fund other urgently needed human services.

Meanwhile, when marijuana is legal in the U.S., the violent drug cartels in Mexico - lawless, bloodthirsty

gangs that slaughter innocent people and stack beheaded bodies along side the Mexican highways just to prove

they can do it - will have lost a big percentage of their illegal profits. Efforts to put a stop to the trafficking of

marijuana across the nation's borders have mostly failed thus far. There are new and potentially helpful strategies,

like the use of drones (un-manned airplanes that have video cameras and are guided by computers on the ground)

that fly over both sides of the border and eavesdrop on dubious activities. Technicians on the ground receive the

life video feed from the drone and when drug runners (or other suspicious activities) are seen, that information is

relayed immediately to law enforcement (Border Patrol personnel).

An article in the Independent on March 17 reports that the Mexican government has agreed to allow U.S.-

made drones to "fly over its territory to gather intelligence on drug traffickers," the article states. This is actually

an expansion of the U.S. role in the effort to halt the previously unhindered flow of drugs into the U.S. The

- 2 -

1

2

3

4

1. One positive step that

should be...

Good job identifying a claim.

Please combine this

paragraph with your previous

paragraph. Remember that

your thesis statement is

generally found at the end of

your introduction. [Grace

Lim]

2. Meanwhile,

Unnecessary to state,

"meanwhile." [Grace Lim]

3. There are new and

potentially helpful...

Be sure to cite your sources.

Please remember that each

in-text