NUEVO LAREDO OFFERS GLIMPSE INTO DRUG WAR

Not long ago Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, was a peaceful border community.

But in recent years drug-related violence has spun out of control in
Laredo's sister city.

This year alone, more than three dozen people have been killed in
drug-related incidents and 17 have disappeared in this city of half a
million people, according to the Laredo Morning Times.

With no end in sight to the violence, the government of President Vicente
Fox has sent more than 300 federal agents and an untold number of soldiers
to restore law and order.

It's anybody's guess how long the federales and the soldiers will stay, but
their presence may make Neolaredenses -- as Nuevo Laredo residents are
called-- feel like they are living in a police state. That, of course, may
be preferable in the short term to living in a lawless city.

These recent developments show how serious the drug problem is in Nuevo
Laredo and a growing number of Mexican cities. It's like a cancer that can
slowly but steadily destroy the nation.

In Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico City, Guadalajara and Culiacan, the
capital of the western state of Sinaloa, drug-related killings and
kidnappings long have terrorized the citizenry.

Americans who use illegal drugs should be forced to see the consequences of
their habits on this nation's southern neighbor.

Few stories describe the drug-related violence as well as a recent murder at
Nuevo Laredo's San Jose Hospital. Armed men forced their way into the room
of a man who had been wounded in an earlier attack and shot him to death in
front of his horrified wife.

Laredoans and other South Texas residents have the right to be nervous about
drug-related murders across the Rio Grande.

As has happened in other U.S. communities that abut Mexico, the violence
often spills to this side of the border.

Drug dealers do not hesitate to kill. They don't care which side of the
border they're on.