CRIMINAL JUSTICE 1 question drugs Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

CRIMINAL JUSTICE 1 question drugs - Coursework Example In truth, Colombian drug organizations and Mexican drug organizations have traditionally taken different roles in the drug trafficking chain. In the article by Lyman (2011), the relationship started with Mexican drug organizations acting as surrogates and partners of their Colombian counterpart drug organizations – taking advantage of the borders between Mexico and the United States to smuggle in cocaine from Colombia (page 136). However, towards the end of the 1980s the Mexicans were no longer satisfied with being mere conduits and wanted a share both of the drug loot and the U.S. markets. Lyman explained the consequence of this: Eventually, this arrangement with the Colombians not only resulted in dividing the cocaine shipments down the middle but in dividing much of the U.S. markets down the middle. As the arrangement evolved over time, the Colombians retained the wholesale market in the eastern United States as their own, and Mexican drug cartels took over the wholesale market in the Midwestern and Western states. According to Bagley (1988), the expanded role of the Mexicans in the drug trade had created, in his words, â€Å"an unprecedented wave of drug related violence in Mexico that seriously threatened the country’s fledgling process of democratization. (page 71)†. And this begins to answer the question as to whether or not these drug cartels are as much of a threat to the United States as traditional terrorist organizations. In fact, it may even be argued that drug cartels are even more of a threat to the United States than the terrorist networks that people have come to associate with Islamic fundamentalist groups and the like. For one thing, the scale of violence wrought by drug organization can perhaps rival that of traditional terrorist organizations. Colombia’s principal guerrilla organization, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucion de