"Health & Medical News"

A multibillion-dollar anti-drug pact between the U.S. and Mexico could fail unless it includes action against the cartel’s money supplies and improvements in police intelligence, Reuters reported Oct. 23.

Much of the $1.4 billion that the Bush administration wants to send to Mexico would be spent on helicopters and other equipment. But Ernesto Mendieta, a former Mexican prosecutor and security advisor, said, “More helicopters won’t make a difference because you are only dealing with the armed side of the cartels. You’ve got to go after their finances and find out where their banks accounts are. That is the way to weaken them.”

Mexico said it plans to spend $7 billion on the so-called Merida Initiative over the next three years. But Mendieta said that Mexico has a poor record of going after drug financing, and that traffickers launder billions of dollars annually both domestically and internationally.

“Tracking that money is time consuming and doesn’t make headline news, but it has to be done,” Mendieta said.

An ongoing crackdown on drug cartels in Mexico also has been hampered by lack of local intelligence. “The U.S.-Mexican drug plan is not the magic solution. It will help, but you need intelligence, people on the inside, and money alone can’t buy that,” said Jorge Chabat of Mexico’s CIDE think-tank.

More broadly, some experts say, the anti-drug plan is doomed to fail if it does not address the poverty that pushes so many into trafficking.

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