Who are the main actors and stakeholders in US-Mexican drug problem - Essay Example

The toll of drug-war related deaths has reached 28,228 since January 2007, as based on data analysed by the University of San-Diego Trans-Border Institute taken from Agencia Reforma news group. It is a war fought with the help of 45,000 soldiers and 5,000 federal forces in 18 states where trafficking groups are trying to get access to the US market for selling drugs as there is total prohibition on the sale of drugs in the US. There has been recurrent flow of arms to the South while cartel-linked crime has been heading towards North (LAT 2010).

One of the main stakeholders in the drug trafficking, the US, is not recognising the ill-effects of the war between the illicit stakeholders and the active players, namely the Mexican government, the US government and the press waging a collective war against the traffickers. In stead of rebuking Hillary Clinton on her remarks that violence in Mexico has grown to such proportions as total insurgency, the President Obama should pay urgent attention to the happenings by calling a meeting to discuss the repercussions of increasing violence with the members of his national security team and outside experts (Carpenter 2010).

Other actors and stakeholders in the US-Mexican drug problem include the media reporters bravely involved in covering the activities of drug cartels. Drug mafia has waged a counter-war against reporters killing more than 30 journalists since 2006. Working conditions for reporters are not better than they are facing in countries like Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan. Media has been forced there to play the role of a silent spectator by not prominently covering the activities of drug mafia. The intimidation of the media has crossed the limits to the extent that in one of the editorials El Diario, the main newspaper in Ciudad Juarez, the centre of violence in Mexico’s drug war, has sought advice from traffickers on what to publish and what not after the traffickers killed one of