Report: Drug Kingpin’s Death Sparks Job Opening

The killing of Mexican drug lord Beltran Leyva was hailed by drug prohibition advocates last week.

 MEXICO CITY, Mexico — The killing of Mexican drug lord Beltran Leyva was hailed by drug prohibition advocates last week.

But the Mexican government’s violent “victory” was also seen as a very epic failure.

“What they’re really doing is advertising a job opening, because that’s what they’ve created: A fantastic business opportunity,” wrote Neill Franklin of AlterNet.

Franklin noted that drug lord Joaquin Guzman is worth an estimated $1 billion, according to Forbes Magazine’s world’s richest people list of 2009.

“It’s taken [Mexican President Felipe] Calderón’s military three years, 45,000 troops and the lives of 14,000 people to “take down” someone with this high-ranking status in the drug war. Is this a way to measure success?” Franklin added.

Leyva and his bodyguards were in a shootout with Mexican authorities on foot and in U.S.-gifted heliocopters for 90 minutes before they were killed in the raid.

Overall it is estimated that the illegal drug industry produces $500 billion a year for organized crime.

Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan told CBS’s Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation in April the drug legailzation debate must be made based on the industry’s dynamics.

“You have to bring demand down and one way to do it is to move in that direction [towards legalization],” Sarukhan told Schieffer.