How Mexico’s drug war washed up on Canada’s West Coast

Vancouver task force struggles with fallout of crackdown on cartels
May 30, 2009
Linda Diebel, STAFF REPORTER

“While the U.S. Attorney General’s Office calls the Mexican drug cartels a “national security threat” and says 230 American cities have been infiltrated, the port city of Vancouver may be Canada’s first to feel the fallout from the crackdown on Mexico’s drug lords.
Already this year in the Vancouver area – nicknamed the gang capital of Canada – there have been 30 shootings (with 12 fatalities) directly linked to the gang shakeout in Mexico and tracked by the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs. Some 130 gangs operate in B.C., among them Red Scorpions, United Nations, MS-13, Bacon Brothers, Hells Angels and various independents – all with ties of varying degrees to lucrative Mexican cocaine, among other drugs from other places.”

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