Hugh Bollinger / Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Deadly priorities

For the annual cost of the Drug War, we could have 100 shuttle missions

By Reilly Capps I know this is a website about science and the environment, not politics, but I need to note here a couple obvious facts: Our pockets are empty, so we're cutting funding for basic science research. We're shutting down the Space Shuttle. And yet I haven't heard talk of cutting funding for the War on Drugs. Even though it costs $44 billion a year. You know how many people died in the Drug Wars in Mexico last year? Fifteen thousand. We are effectively spending $44 billion a year to fight a war which directly leads to the deaths of 15,000 people. Meanwhile, you know how many people around the world died from illegal drugs? Not many, and they were self-inflicted. You know how many died from marijuana? Zero. For the cost of fighting the Drug War for one year, you could have 100 shuttle missions. All that's esoteric. It's worse to see the human cost. Visiting Juarez and El Paso the past few days, I meet a journalist who was roughed up, robbed and threatened by the police. I meet a woman who was carjacked by teenagers. I meet a young lady whose cousin had died in a hail of bullets the day before. I meet a doctor in Juarez. All he does all day is help give life to babies. And all Carlos Enrique Manzano does all evening is dodge the Drug Wars. He lives behind a gate, in a house with three locks. He doesn't go out at night anymore. He got rid of his cell phone because drug traffickers kept calling him demanding money. Carlos owns a giant 2009 Dodge Ram with that new car smell, on account of the fact that he always drives a beat-up Malibu instead. People in nice cars get kidnapped. We cruise the streets doing misery tourism. For probably the first time in my life, my legs shake from fear. On dirt streets visible from America shacks are made of tires, mud, and chicken wire. Carlos sings a song that resonates in this neighborhood, "It's sad to hear rain fall on roofs made of cardboard." Juarez was the fastest growing and one of the richest cities in Mexico, but over the last three years it has descended into hell. Abandoned houses are covered in graffiti and broken glass, block after block which were once open are now closed by residents who fearfully turned their own neighborhoods into jails, put guards at every entrance and razor wire on every wall. Carlos shows me the bridge where he saw hanging a row of three severed heads. A man hawks a newspaper at a stoplight. The headline screams: "LO MATAN Y LO QUEMAN -- Frente de su familia." "THEY KILL AND BURN HIM -- In front of his family." I start to roll down my window to buy a copy, but Carlos stops me. "They'll reach in and steal your money." We ask an older man in crumpled t-shirt directions to the center of town. "It ended," he says. "What ended?" Carlos says. "The center. The center is over." Anarchy is loosed upon Juarez, innocence is drowned. Looking for the bright side, I ask Carlos what's good about Juarez. "Before, there was a good economy, if you lost your job you had a new one in two days, it was easy to go to El Paso for shopping or shows." "And now?" He thinks. "No. Nothing." Is there at least more work for the doctors at the hospital, stitching up all the injured people? "No," he says. "They either kill people or nothing." You know what's good about Juarez? Carlos. And the other people like him who are trying to make the city better, but are being driven out by a terrible and largely preventable situation that is robbing our treasury and costing us lives.

Knowing how to see Happy Birthday, Neptune

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Tags: reilly capps RiledUp NASA space shuttle Drug war Juarez mexico

Deadly priorities

For the annual cost of the Drug War, we could have 100 shuttle missions

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