The case also contributed to a heated national debate about the use of racial profiling in police work, particularly in drug interdiction, with critics calling it racist but some law enforcement officials saying it was vital and effective.
In a similar vein, from the poppy fields of the Bekaa Valley to the smuggling routes of North Africa and the Sahel, Arab and Western security forces have faced the challenge of combining interdiction with economic development to offset locals' loss in revenue from criminal activity.
The Drug Enforcement Administration worked the heroin trafficking and interdiction effort with the Afghans.
While a New York campaign to coordinate gun interdiction efforts with Southern states is welcome, Congress must pass the Firearms Safety and Consumer Protection Act.
And it helped ignite a heated national debate about the proper use of profiling in police work, particularly in drug interdiction policy, with critics calling it racist but some law enforcement officials saying it was simply good police work.
Michael Unzueta, the Customs Service's deputy executive director, Operations West, said the town generally ranked among the most active places for drug smuggling and interdiction, along with San Ysidro, Calif., Yuma, Ariz., and El Paso.
The returned troops told of the slaughter of civilians; "reconnaissance by fire," or soldiers shooting blindly; "harassment and interdiction fire," with artillery being used to shell villages; captives thrown from helicopters; severed ears drying in the sun or being swapped for beers; and "Zippo inspections" of cigarette lighters in preparation for burning villages.
The White House budget proposal for fiscal 2014 devotes 58percentt of drug-control spending to punishment and interdiction, compared with 42percenttotreatmentent and prevention.
Usually, this kind of interdiction is done with a scalpel, not a hammer.
One important factor that contributed to the poor relations was the American interdiction of trade with the Indian populations on the upper St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, since the trade goods might be used to support British garrisons in those areas.
This undercuts the entire basis for thinking of the drug problem as mainly having to do with interdiction of foreign substances, and places it more in the category of "Why do people take drugs, and then some become addicted to them?" This is a much larger and more psychological, cultural, and public health issue.
