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Our 50-State Border Crisis
The Truth About the Mexican Border and America's Drug Epidemic
1 of 1 copy available
Howard G. Buffett has seen first-hand the devastating impact of cheap Mexican heroin and other opiate cocktails across America. Fueled by failing border policies and lawlessness in Mexico and Central America, drugs are pouring over the nation's southern border in record quantities, turning Americans into addicts and migrants into drug mules — and killing us in record numbers.
Politicians talk about a border crisis and an opioid crisis as separate issues. To Buffett, a landowner on the U.S. border with Mexico and now a sheriff in Illinois, these are intimately connected. Ineffective border policies not only put residents in border states like Texas and Arizona in harm's way, they put American lives in states like Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Vermont at risk.
Mexican cartels have grown astonishingly powerful by exploiting both the gaps in our border security strategy and the desperation of migrants — all while profiting enormously off America's growing addiction to drugs. The solution isn't a wall. In this groundbreaking book, Buffett outlines a realistic, effective, and bi-partisan approach to fighting cartels, strengthening our national security, and tackling the roots of the chaos below the border.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 3, 2018 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780316476584
- File size: 54285 KB
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780316476584
- File size: 54935 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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March 1, 2018
A sort-of-liberal, sort-of-conservative argument for a secure southern border, served up by investor and philanthropist Buffett (40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World, 2013, etc.).It is telling that this examination of border policy and the drug trade comes with two forewords, one by Cindy McCain, a conservative Arizonan, and the other by Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a comparatively liberal North Dakotan. By Buffett's--son of Warren--account, the drug epidemic served by cartels from south of the border is a nonpartisan issue. In any event, his argument is not doctrinaire, and it refreshingly lacks the knee-jerk xenophobia that the current administration has been serving up with its talk of a border wall. In a mostly levelheaded narrative, the author calls for a carefully, professionally, and nationally policed border. As he writes, "patrolling our borders effectively today...demands a combination of law enforcement, intelligence gathering, and foreign adversary engagement skills and tactics beyond basic law enforcement." Interestingly, Buffett also recognizes the economic and political forces that are driving the drug trade in Mexico, for which he suggests a multipronged aid approach that includes American help in breaking up the Central American gangs that seem to be the chief source of supply for young, violence-prone foot soldiers. In all this, he urges probity and diplomacy. "Insulting, bullying, or belittling Mexico will never help us improve border security," he writes, pointedly. "To help Mexico change for the better, we need to change as well." The author doesn't quite hit hard enough on a couple of matters--namely, that there wouldn't be a cartel-driven drug market without domestic demand and that big pharma is a cartel all its own, with imported heroin serving as a substitute for most addicts when prescribed opioids aren't available. Still, his case holds up pretty well, with only occasional bursts of undue alarmism.A useful, reasonable work of civilian policy analysis sure to invite discussion and even controversy.COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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