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• n  an area that has been taken over and is controlled and corrupted by drug cartels and where law enforcement is effectively nonexistent
  this Mexican town has become a narco-state that ships 100 pounds of cocaine to the United States every day

• But statements from people who have fled the North and an array of circumstantial evidence paints a more likely picture: the North is a narco-state in which all aspects of the .
• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has described Karzai's administration as a "narco-state.
• In the mean time, Southeast Asia's largest narco-state continues to thrive.

News & Articles

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• Crooked Mexican mayor gets 11 years for money laundering
  A crooked former Mexican governor was sentenced today to 11 years in the slammer for using American banks to launder $17 million in bribes he pocketed through a stunning corruption scheme that turned his territory into a “virtual narco-state.” Mario Villaneuva helped the notorious Juarez drug cartel funnel massive amounts...
  June 29, 2013 - New York Post

Quotes

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• Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in Washington Post
  It is time for some new thinking to ensure that Afghanistan does not fall into a failed narco-state status and become, once again, a safe haven for al-Qaida,wrote Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the top Republican on the House Foreign...
• Barry McCaffrey in Earthtimes (press release)
  McCaffrey calls that "a drop in the bucket compared to what was spent in Iraq and Afghanistan ( $700 billion to date). We cannot afford to have a narco-state as a neighbor."
• Richard Holbrooke in Reuters
  Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said last year (when he was not in government service) that "breaking the narco-state in Afghanistan is essential or all else will fail."