Australia is now a target of the drug cartels.
February 17, 2019
By Sally Rawsthrone
...Plan Colombia
In the 1990s, (click here) Colombia was ground zero for the global war on drugs – and also one of the deadliest places on Earth, as cartels battled for supremacy and civilians were frequently caught in the crossfire.
As part of the United States' War on Drugs, then-president Bill Clinton implemented an enormous humanitarian program named Plan Colombia in 2000 – leaving Colombia in relative peace, as the cartels set up shop in its northern neighbour, Mexico.
"It's called a balloon effect," UNSW Latin American crime expert Dr Anthea McCarthy-Jones said. "It hasn't eradicated the problem, it's just pushed it closer to the US borders."
While Colombia still produces the majority of the world's cocaine, its sale is largely controlled by two Mexican cartels, the Sinaloa Cartel – whose fearsome leader Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán was convicted this week of pumping drugs into the US, bribing officials, laundering money and commanding his assassins to commit brutal acts of violence, and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
These cartels are the two main suppliers to Australian criminals, and also control Mexico's superlabs that turn precursors imported from Asia into ice that is sold to Australia and elsewhere.
"The labs predominantly supply the US market. There's an oversupply of ice for US and that's being redirected to Australia and other countries," the Australian Federal Police's Assistant Commissioner for organised crime, Bruce Hill, told The Sun-Herald....
