Leahy Freeze on Mexico Drug War Funds from US Will Save Lives and Money Laura Carlsen - CIP Americas Program
go to original August 9, 2013

Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy (CIP)

Senator Patrick Leahy, chair of the Appropriations Committee, blocked release of $95 million dollars in funding for the Merida Initiative, citing the lack of a clear strategy on the part of the U.S. State Department and the Mexican government.

“The whole things looks like just coughing up money with no accountability,”Leahy was quoted as saying in the legislative monitor, CQ Roll Call.

The decision is a long-overdue recognition that the drug war in Mexico has been a bloody fiasco. The Merida Initiative, a Bush-era plan to attack cartels in Mexico and reduce trafficking of prohibited drugs to the U.S. market, began in 2008. Congress has appropriated $1.9 billion dollars from the federal budget for the program over the past five years, most aimed at bolstering Mexican security forces. Since the drug war was launched and armed forces deployed to fight the cartels, the homicide rate in Mexico soared 150%, between 2006 and 2012.

Read the rest at CIP Americas Program

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