Dear Friend,
Several days ago I spoke to a group of teenagers at the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles. All of them had come here from other countries, the majority of them from Latin America, many having literally walked to California from their native countries.
What level of desperation would propel a parent to cross some of the most inhospitable terrain in the world in order to seek a better life for themselves and their children? The answer, of course, is extreme violence and danger - much of it at the hands of the drug cartels. But United States foreign policy over the last few decades has not helped to stabilize the economics and societies of Latin American countries, so much as it has in many ways exacerbated the problems.
We must take responsibility for our part in the border crisis, and approach it differently. In this as in so many areas, my value as President will be a willingness to think about issues in a new way, in order that we might find new solutions.
As President, I would recognize that drugs are a social and mental health issue, not simply a criminal one. By decriminalizing and regulating drugs, turning addiction into a health rather than a criminal issue, we will cut off much of the market that the drug cartels depend on.
