WASHINGTON — Efforts by Mexico and the United States to stem the skyrocketing border drug and weapons trade are failing, and both countries are to blame for the rise of violent cartels responsible for more than 6,000 deaths in Mexico last year, lawmakers and experts said in a Senate hearing Tuesday.
For years, elected officials in Washington portrayed Mexico as being largely responsible for the problems spawned by the increasingly powerful crime syndicates -- and for fixing them.
But at an unusual hearing of the Senate judiciary subcommittee on crime and drugs and the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, lawmakers from both parties said repeatedly that Washington's inattention to decades of drug use by Americans had played a central role in the crisis.
Many also acknowledged that their own government's failure to stop the southbound stream of weapons and laundered cash had fueled the multibillion-dollar drug trade just as much as the northbound flow of cocaine, heroin, marijuana, methamphetamine and smuggled humans.
"Mexico and America are in this together, and there is enough blame to go around," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the subcommittee chairman and assistant majority leader of the Senate. "The insatiable demand for illegal drugs in the United States keeps the Mexican drug cartels in business."
He also said lax U.S. gun laws and poor enforcement had created an "iron river of guns" that had armed "Mexican drug cartels to the teeth."
Durbin was one of several lawmakers who said Congress would begin considering ways to reduce U.S. demand for drugs through treatment and other methods.
The Department of Homeland Security and other U.S. agencies are preparing to deploy more federal agents to the border in response to the drug cartels, one law enforcement official said on condition of anonymity because the plan was not public.
"The number of agents has not been determined," the official said.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), co-chairman of the narcotics caucus, said in the hearing that corruption in Mexico remained a crucial problem. But he also said U.S. authorities needed to share more intelligence and do more investigations with Mexico.
He also said it was important to get rid of overlapping authorities between the Department of Homeland Security and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
