The ongoing drug wars in Mexico hold tremendous negative consequences both for that country and ours. The United States should offer whatever assistance the Mexicans will take to quell the violence.

This was shown once again Wednesday when an off-duty U.S. airman was shot to death along with five other people at a bar in Ciudad Juarez.

The airman was violating orders by being in the bar \— the Air Force has banned its members from going to the entire Mexican state of Chihuahua \— but, of course, he should not have had to pay for his life for that.

The orders were obviously to protect him and other U.S. military personnel. We hope no other airmen will venture across the border.

For that matter we would tell all Americans that staying out of Chihuahua and particularly Juarez is good advice.

Juarez is one of the most violent cities in the world. In just the last four days there have been 30 homicides there, at least that we know about. Many go missing in Juarez without even a trace. There have been a few moving books written about the dead in that city.

It is no accident that the drug war violence is largely focused in this city, which is only separated from El Paso by the Rio Grande River.

The drug kingpins want to be located as close to their customers as they can possibly be.

That would be the citizens of the United States.

There are far too many drug users in our country and it is obvious we are not taking the correct path in reducing that number. We have heard all the arguments about legalizing marijuana and how that would solve the problem, but we just don't buy it.

Are we also going to legalize meth, heroin, cocaine of all sorts and kinds, LSD?

Sorry, but we do not believe the answer to crime and drug abuse is to simply make every offense legal.

Meanwhile, however, the drug war rages. The upshot of that is that some of this violence leaks over into the United States \— and not just right at the border, either.

Secondly, in a huge city such as Juarez with 1,900 people already killed in drug-related violence in the first 10 months of this year, we create a situation where people are fleeing the violence.

So not only do we have illegal immigrants that come to the United States seeking jobs, we have refugees just trying not to be killed.

The first is a failure of the immigration system and maybe \— just maybe \— it can be fixed in some way.

The second, however, is not going to be fixed by any law or presidential decree. As violence escalates, more refugees will come across the border.

This is something that happens everywhere in the world in similar situations. It will happen here, too.

It is quite apparent to us that the Mexican government is unable to control this situation, mostly because of widespread corruption within its police force.

Corruption happens everywhere, but in Juarez, it could be there are more corrupted police than honest ones. It goes even deeper than that, with the judicial system also complicit.

The situation has to be addressed soon. We cannot believe it will get better by taking no action. We obviously cannot control the Mexican government, but we can use various ways of pressuring them and we should use every method that is at our disposal to do just that.