Drug war’s damage

Re “In Ciudad Juarez, death is just around the corner,” Column One, Dec. 20

The violence you describe in Mexico isn’t caused by drugs but rather the prohibition of drugs. You go into detail about the circumstances of the violence in Mexico, and it’s clear people aren’t killing each other because they are high. They’re killing over an unstable black market that the government of Mexico created when it declared war on the cartels two years ago.

Perhaps with the looming financial crisis, our government will wise up and call an end to this drug war that has been a disaster for the last 40 years. But as long as the media continue to report the drug war as a drug problem and not the crime that it is, it will be harder to solve the problems caused by the drug war, it will be more difficult to identify the issues surrounding drug prohibition, and we will be stuck in this quagmire longer.

William Aiken

Schenectady, N.Y.

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Your article captures the agony of a Mexican city and its working people.

I hope that you and others now will write more about how our politicians, opinion makers and talking heads on TV are unenlightened and overlook the source of the problem: the demand for illicit drugs by U.S. consumers.

Enrique Legaspi

La Crescenta