Traffic Jams were an unusual sight heading into Mexico until recently

In yet another twist on the ongoing bizarreness between Mexico and the United States, Mexico is ramping up their security to deny drug cartels weapons and money. The Los Angeles Times reports here on the new measures, including scales to weigh cars, license plate registry and vehicle scanners.

The trade-off is something we Canadians have long become used to, but which Americans are grumbling… crossing the border is now a time-consuming task and businesses are none-too-happy about it.

It’s a sign of the times that crossing a once easy border is becoming increasingly difficult, and critics say that the American border guards, using far more advanced technology and well-entrenched screening techniques, only manage to capture a fraction of the drugs and illegal goods flowing into America… what hope can the new Mexican guards have of stopping weapons? The Mexican authorities, however, are hopeful… and I suspect that their new border-crossing defense will actually snare a good percentage of the weapons being smuggled, if only for a few months.

See, for now the majority of the gun runners could drive right over the border without pause… and so they were never terribly careful. These sloppy runners are going to get caught without too much hassel… of course, within a few months the gun runners will take more careful measures, and the Mexicans will be forced to step up their interception efforts… which will make the smugglers try harder, which will… well, you get the idea.

I still think it’s basically a good idea… although Canada has always had relatively lax border-crossing protection, we’re also not battling massive drug cartels or well-armed criminal elements. I sympathize more with the Mexican President trying to keep criminals unarmed and off-balance than I do with vacationers and travellers unwilling to wait an extra 40 minutes to cross into Mexico…

Then again, maybe I just want the Americans to face a little slice of what we have to go through to get into the States.