NOVANEWS
The US State Secretary Hillary Clinton says US fuels drug violence in Mexico. The availability of narcotics and the abuse of prescription drugs have affected almost everyone in the United States, says a recently released report.
“The trafficking and abuse of drugs affects everyone,” said Michael T. Walther, director of the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center, which produced the 2010 report released on Thursday, CNN reported. “The economic cost alone is estimated at nearly USD 215 billion annually.”
According to the report, the Mexican cartels establish “the single greatest drug trafficking threat to the United States.” The Mexican organizations have managed so far to send illegal drugs to almost every region in the US and are expanding their reach even further to rural and suburban areas deep inside the country.
Almost all the drugs produced in Mexico or other regional countries are destined for lucrative markets in the United States, the largest consumer of illicit drugs in the Western hemisphere.
Mexico, which has launched an all-out war on the country’s drug cartels, holds the US responsible for all the drug violence suffered in the Central American nation.
Washington is also blamed for providing arms to the drug cartels as the bulk of the weaponry circulated in Mexico originates from the United States. “We know that the demand for drugs drives much of this illicit trade and that gun purchases in the US are used to facilitate violence here in Mexico,” US secretary of State Hillary Clinton said earlier this week, acknowledging that America’s ‘insatiable appetite’ for drugs fuels violence in the country.