UTEP DRUG CONFERENCE: NEW CARTEL METHODS WIDEN DRUG WAR'S TOLL

EL PASO -- Crime organizations from the Mexican states of Sinaloa and
Tamaulipas control the drug trade along the U.S.-Mexico border, said
Luis Astorga, an eminent drug analyst in Mexico.

"They handle the drugs that come in through Michoacan, where the
organization La Familia operates," Astorga said. "La Familia is the
only new major group to emerge during the war against the drug cartels."

Astorga, an investigator with the National Autonomous University of
Mexico Institute of Social Research, also said Mexican President
Felipe Calderon faced limited options when he decided to use the army
to take on the cartels.

He said the brutal drug violence witnessed in drug corridor cities
like Juarez began when the Tijuana cartel's Zetas introduced a
paramilitary approach to the cartel's enforcement apparatus. The
Zetas, mostly ex-soldiers who joined the drug cartel, are enforcers
who now control the Tijuana cartel's drug operations.

"The cartels then went from utilizing traditional hit men to
paramilitaries with enhanced training and weapons," he said. "This
changed the rules of the game among them for violence, and did away
with the old codes the drug groups used to follow."

The former rules included not killing women and children.

Nearly 12,000 people have died violently in Mexico since Calderon
announced the war against the drug cartels.

Astorga is among the featured speakers invited to the "U.S. War on
Drugs Conference" this week at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Other experts include Joy Olson, executive director of the Washington
Office on Latin America, a think tank that advises officials on
policy matters; Anthony Placido, a Drug Enforcement Administration
official in Washington, D.C.; John Burnett, international
correspondent for National Public Radio; and Oscar J. Martinez, a
border scholar and Regents' Professor of History at the University of Arizona.

Sponsors include UTEP, Plan Estrategico de Juarez founded by Mexican
Coca- Cola magnate Miguel Fernandez Iturriza, the Hunt Family
Foundation, the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, the
city of El Paso Committee on Border Relations and the University at
Texas at Houston School of Public Health.

UTEP students Vanessa Romero, 21, and Nubia Legarda, 20, who are also
active in the UTEP chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, said
the conference provides a vehicle to discuss a broad range of issues
related to drug abuse and the drug violence.

"Among other things, Students for Sensible Drug Policy want to help
students who are experiencing drug problems through a good samaritan
policy," said Legarda, a biology major.

Romero said she hopes the conference will stimulate further dialogue
on the issues raised earlier this year by South-West city Rep. Beto
O'Rourke, who wanted the city to ask the federal government to debate
the merits of decriminalizing drugs.

Mexico decriminalized the use of small amounts of drugs last month.

Martinez, who used to teach at UTEP, said the conference is the first
of its kind in the United States. "UTEP should be complimented on
bringing together scholars to evaluate the impact of the war on
drugs, and assessing its failures and successes," Martinez said.

Regardless of whether the United States accepts or rejects legalizing
or decriminalizing drugs, Martinez said the nation needs an
aggressive education program on the effects of drug abuse.

"What we have has been feeble," he said. "We need to have the kind of
education program we had with tobacco, which brought down the rate of
smoking tremendously."

Sergio Fajardo Valderrama, a former mayor of Medellin, Colombia, is
expected to join the Juarez portion of the conference and to meet
privately with the Paso Del Norte Group in El Paso. He is running for
president of Colombia next year.

Astorga said, "The U.S. drug market continues to be the largest
demand market for drugs, and crime organizations in Mexico and
Colombia, the two principal drug producers in the hemisphere, will
continue to pose security challenges for the United States."

Recently, several members of the U.S. Congress sent a letter to
President Obama regarding a request by the Pentagon to extend its
access to military bases in Colombia as part of ongoing plans to
battle drug dealers and terrorists.

U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., a native of El Paso, is among the
representatives who signed the Sept. 15 letter that states, "We hope
you will exercise caution in negotiating any increase in U.S.
military aid to and presence in Colombia."