BORDER KILLINGS: DRUG USERS SHARE BLAME

SUNDAY'S killings in Mexico of a United States consulate employee, her
husband and the husband of another employee elicited stern travel
warnings from our State Department, cautioning American college
students not to visit the country during spring break.

The nexus of increasing violence in border cities at the hands of
warring drug cartels and of partying American college students is a
jarring picture.

But it has another germane connection: drug trafficking in Mexico and
illegal drug sales and use in America.

As thousands were reminded by Father Beto Villalobos and Cardinal
Roger Mahony at the funeral of El Monte educator Bobby Salcedo in
January, the cost of doing illegal drugs is not only measured in
dollars but in lives lost. The drug wars raging in such places as
Ciudad Juarez, where Sunday's killings of Americans took place, are a
direct result of U.S. consumption.

Salcedo, 33, was the school board member for El Monte City School
District kidnapped from a restaurant and killed execution-style while
visiting his wife's relatives in Gomez Palacio, Durango, on Dec. 31.
Since 2006, more than 12,000 people have been killed in Mexico -
mostly part of a violent retaliation by drug lords to the crackdown by
Mexican police and federal authorities on the country's drug cartels.

It's wishful thinking to imagine that connecting the drug violence in
Mexico and drug use here in Los Angeles County will quickly scare
users straight.

Still, that connection raised by religious leaders in El Monte and
recently by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well must be made
over and over again. The message is just too important to ignore.
Americans who buy drugs on the street must know that they are
contributing to the deaths of innocent victims in Mexico and here as
well as drug dealers and gang members in our cities murder innocent
people who get in their way.

The motive for Salcedo's death, still being investigated, is unknown.
But authorities said he probably was in the wrong place at the wrong
time and just caught up in drug cartel violence. Likewise, the
killings Sunday of consulate employee Lesley A. Enriquez, 35, and her
husband, Arthur H. Redelfs, 34, were most likely at the hands of drug
lords. The third victim was the husband of a Mexican employee at the
consulate.

There will be increased calls for more aid from the United States to
help Mexican authorities battle drug lords. Already, President Obama
has shifted more aid - $1.3 billion - to help put drug dealers in
Mexico out of business. It is important for the U.S. to support
Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who continues the important if
clearly dangerous war on drug gangs in Mexico despite the heavy human
toll.

But it is equally important for users here to get the message, one
they may understand over time. As Clinton said, "Our insatiable demand
for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade." That makes reducing demand
for drugs just as important a strategy as any amount of aid.