U.S. fuels Mexico’s drug cartels

The news about the kidnappings of four Americans who traveled to Mexico earlier this month was heartbreaking, especially since two of them were killed. My heart goes out to the families of the dead and to the survivors.

I can’t help thinking about what this episode conveys about the lives of Mexicans who are forced to live with the horrendous drug-related violence that has engulfed much of their country. Is it any wonder that our southern border is overwhelmed by migrants trying to escape that madness?

After Mexican authorities quickly apprehended a suspect in the kidnappings, Mexican citizens complained that their government and its security apparatus are apathetic about violence against their own citizens, according to The New York Times, which noted that the vast majority of crimes in the country, parts of which have been overrun by drug cartels, go unsolved. While the United States has an annual homicide rate of roughly seven deaths per 100,000 people, according to the World Bank, Mexico has a homicide rate of about 28 per 100,000 people.

There are many caveats, of course. Some parts of Mexico — its capital, Mexico City, for example — are as safe as many locales in the U.S., and some migrants flee for other reasons, including poverty. American tourists, who often vacation in seaside resorts, are rarely in harm’s way. But Matamoros, a city in Tamaulipas state just across the southeastern Texas border, is among the locations that the U.S. State Department warns Americans against visiting. It is beset by violence among warring drug cartels, which not only smuggle illegal narcotics but also engage in human trafficking.

While some Republicans have gone so far as to urge President Joe Biden to categorize Mexican drug cartels as terrorist groups and take military action against them, that smacks of colonialism and the old policy of Manifest Destiny. Biden seems to recognize that.

Instead, Americans should recognize our role in aiding and abetting the violence. This country is, by far, the biggest market for the illicit drugs that have enriched cartels and boosted the corruption that has ensnared Mexico’s criminal justice system. Without American users, the cartels would hardly have such power.

Conversely, the U.S. is, by far, the biggest supplier of firearms to Mexican gangsters. According to data from Mex

ico’s Secretariat of National Defense, as many as 90 percent of all guns recovered in that country were manufactured in the U.S.

The source of the data shows the reason this problem is so hard to curtail: It came from a lawsuit filed in the U.S. against the U.S. gun industry by the Mexican government. The lawsuit was tossed out by a federal judge because the firearms industry here enjoys special protections afforded to no other industry. Given the power of the gun lobby, which has also inflicted considerable harm in this country, that’s unlikely to change.

Nor is our addiction to mind-altering narcotics likely to change. In the halfcentury since President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs, the U.S. criminal justice system has incarcerated countless men and women — a disproportionate number of them Black and brown — while hardly making a dent in the drug problem.

The startling rise in drug overdoses, which began with the opioid crisis in the early 21st century, has prompted lawmakers to speak of treating addiction as a medical problem rather than a crime — an empathy that white power brokers did not show to Black cocaine addicts in the last century. Still, the nation has hardly turned the corner; there remains a dire shortage of residential rehabilitation beds for those who are uninsured or underinsured.

Yet Congress and states continue to pour billions into the criminal justice end of the equation: more prison beds, more jail cells, more high-profile drug busts. The U.S. has also spent billions on cooperative drug interdiction programs inside other nations, including Mexico. It hasn’t worked.

This is not an argument for legalizing dangerous narcotics, but it is a plea for ending a war on drugs that we will never win. If we can’t find another approach, we can expect more horrific violence in nations south of the border and more traumatized migrants trying to escape it. We exempted landlords of owner-occupied buildings who lived in their rental property. We created 10 clear good causes for landlords to evict, like not paying rent, failure to allow the landlord access to the property, breaking the terms of the lease and more. We provided tenants with basic protections and peace of mind.

In the short time that Albany tenants enjoyed Good Cause, the results were immediate. Residents of an apartment complex in my ward successfully defeated their corporate landlord’s attempt to hike rents 50 to 100 percent; they were able to negotiate repairs and agreed on a rent increase capped at five percent. And a local disabled tenant successfully advocated for better living conditions and stopped a retaliatory rent increase of $500.

Now imagine if tenants in every city and town of New York state had these basic protections.

The rulings this past week made clear that the state has the right to enact “Good Cause.” The legislation carried by Sen. Julia Salazar and Assemblywoman Pamela Hunter is a win-win for tenants and for landlords. There are no more excuses: It’s time for Albany to pass statewide “Good Cause” legislation.