'IT'S OUR PROBLEM':

BORDER DOESN'T KEEP OUT DRUG CORRUPTION

Texas and the nation needed a waker-upper.

The pathetic case of former Cameron County Sheriff Conrado Cantu fits
the bill.

His sentencing to 24 years in a federal penitentiary this week is a
strong antidote for anyone starting to feel superior after months of
dire reports of Mexican corruption and chaos.

Those problems clearly don't stop at the border.

Awash in money from the illegal drug trade, our southern neighbor
shows signs of accelerating social and institutional decay, most
prominently near the Rio Grande. It's been an alarmingly bloody year,
with more than 1,100 drug-related slayings. Federal troops moved into
Nuevo Laredo after the entire police force was suspended on suspicion
of corruption.

Now a prominent lawman on the U.S. side stands in court and apologizes
for his own sickening level of corruption - drug trafficking,
extorting money from drug dealers, bribery, etc.

The saving grace was the ongoing federal anti-corruption effort, now
responsible for sending a string of four Texas sheriffs, including the
brazen Cantu, to prison in recent years.

This fall, top U.S. and Mexican officials announced cooperative
efforts against drug lords, whose open warfare has claimed casualties
in both countries. We would still like to see the FBI list top
traffickers on its Most Wanted list, a tactic that has previously
delivered key Mexicans into federal custody and prisons.

The harder task for Americans is recognizing the real enemy - this
country's insatiable need for a high, the source of the corrupting
money.

State Rep. Aaron Pena, of Edinburg, took up the fight against drugs
after his 16-year-old son's drug-related death. He told this newspaper
recently: "It's a problem we can't blame on the Mexicans. At its root,
it's our problem. It is the demand for drugs that causes this to happen."