Narcos all over again: Colombia faces another crisis
This past August, Vice President Mike Pence had a successful visit to Colombia, our closest ally in the South America. The Vice President's visit to this Andean nation (whose capital, Bogota, is only a three-hour flight from Miami) demonstrates the Trump administration's commitment to Colombia as a strategic partner. Colombia recently ended its multi-decade internal conflict fueled and funded mostly by deadly narcotics, but the nation once again faces a turning point with consequences for America's neighborhoods and communities already battling the opioid crisis. In the 1990s and through recent years, the U.S.' Plan Colombia assistance package of approximately $10 billion helped Colombia (in particular, the Colombian police and military) beat back the mighty drug-funded narco-terrorists like the FARC and the big drug cartels. The hard dollars and military equipment paid for by U.S. taxpayers helped to bring some version of peace to Colombia by directly tackling th