The new operation would include U.S. troops on the ground in Mexico striking drug labs and cartel leaders, according to current and former U.S. officials, though a deployment is not imminent.
The Trump administration has begun detailed planning for a new mission to send U.S. troops and intelligence officers into Mexico to target drug cartels, according to two U.S. officials and two former senior U.S. officials familiar with the effort.
The early stages of training for the potential mission, which would include ground operations inside Mexico, has already begun, the two current U.S. officials said. But a deployment to Mexico is not imminent, the two U.S. officials and one of the former U.S. officials said. Discussions about the scope of the mission are ongoing, and a final decision has not been made, the two current U.S. officials said.
The U.S. troops, many of whom would be from Joint Special Operations Command, would operate under the authority of the U.S. intelligence community, known as Title 50 status, the two current officials said. They said officers from the Central Intelligence Agency also would participate.
Some drugs like weed are legal here. You can’t buy from a dealer, but you can grow up to six plants in your home with a permit and carry up to an ounce and smoke in public within reason, for example. We don’t have dispensaries because we reformed our entire supreme court last year and they’ve been operating for only a few months. The previous court ruled that the freedom to develop one’s personality includes drug use and so it’s considered a constitutional right. But then elections happened and we haven’t heard much about it since.
Still, the ingrained “drugs are bad m’kay” attitude we adopted from the US has been hard to shake off, but before that, drugs were not taboo.
Unfortunately, the cartels have smartened up and instead of going for illegal drugs, they’re monopolizing crops like avocados among other industries. And yet that doesn’t mean we need any body’s help to deal with them, but we do need the US to stop supplying fire arms.