While Karen Tandy
touts triumphs against traffickers, taxi drivers are treating drug-trade terrorism like a tourist attraction. From
Reuters:
Streetwise cabbies in northern Mexico are cashing in on the chaos of a violent drug war by whisking wide-eyed visitors about town in macabre tours of seized narco properties and famous murder scenes, Mexico City's Reforma newspaper reported on Sunday.
Taxi drivers in the Pacific coast city of Mazatlan satisfy tourists' ghoulish fascination with a battle between cartels that killed 2,000 people last year, for about 200 pesos ($18) a trip, the newspaper said.
This is great. But we must extend these tours to more fully represent the worldwide horrors of the drug war. From the overflowing prisons in Texas to the barren fumigated hillsides of Colombia, the drug war touches everything and infects everything it touches with hopelessness and decay. Spring for the deluxe package and you can see a drug addict get executed in Thailand.