Vigil held for deaths in Mexican drug war

Erica Terrini

News Editor

Cold, dark but not silent. About 10 students gathered Thursday night in Monroe Park to hold a vigil for the 14 killed during a high school birthday party in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on Jan. 31.

Members of Students for Sensible Drug Policy led fellow students in the vigil, which was part of an international movement. Vigils were held in the United States, Mexico, Canada and Australia.

Devon Tackels, the president of SSDP, said that he and other SSDP members are tired of the drug policies in the United States, which they say are directly responsible for hurting people in other nations.

“Drugs are more accessible, cheaper and more pure than they ever have been,” Tackels said. “The violence in the black market that has been created by these (drugs) has led to huge amounts of deaths.”

The 2009 National Drug Control Strategy of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy states the control strategy includes prevention tactics, outlines the treatment priority and focuses on U.S. initiatives in monitoring and disrupting the illegal market.

The strategy states cooperative drug enforcement efforts with Mexico produced impressive results in 2008, with Mexican authorities working to bring down several prominent cartels.

But according to the Overseas Security Advisory Council, 1,600 murders were committed in and around Ciudad Juarez in 2008 and more than 70 police officers and soldiers were killed. There were 55 known cases of kidnappin, and more than 300 known cases of sexual assault and rape. There were also approximately 86 bank robberies and 17,000 car thefts, including as many as 1,650 carjackings.

The OSAC stated cartel violence in the region has undermined locals’ confidence in the Mexican government’s ability to ensure public security.

“Most of it goes unnoticed,” Tackels said. “It’s so commonplace down there. If that were America, it’d be on the news for days on days and weeks on end.”

Tackels and Frederick R. Polli, a juvenile defense attorney who attended and spoke at the vigil, said the Jan. 31 cartel shooting could be linked to the national drug policy.

“We have natural rights as men,” Polli said. “Among those rights is the right to control our own bodies and our own mind. Laws that violate the basic rights of men do not work because large numbers of people are not going to follow them.”

According to Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, in 2008 an estimated 20.1 million Americans age 12 or older were current (past month) illicit drug users.

The SAMHSA’s 2008 national survey estimated the overall rate of current illicit drug use among persons aged 12 or older in 2008 (8 percent) was the same as the rate in 2007 and has remained stable since 2002 (8.3 percent).

Since the 2009 national strategy and SAMHSA’s survey, new efforts were proposed Feb. 1 by President Barack Obama’s administration to fund drug control.

According to the ONDCP, the proposed Fiscal Year 2011 National Drug Control Budget would supply $15.5 billion for the national and international prevention and treatment of drug abuse. Funding would increase 13.4 percent over the level of funding for the current fiscal year.

But Tackels and Polli say national drug policies have failed as evidenced by the recent cartel shooting, the severity of which does not seem to have impacted the majority of Americans.

“It was a massacre similar to that of Virginia Tech and we feel that we should give it the attention that it deserves,” Tackels said.