The Real Victims of Mexico’s Drug War

Wall Street Journal, 11/11/2012

With voters in Colorado and Washington state approving the legalization of marijuana use on Tuesday, there is hope that the U.S. may be at the beginning of the end of the long, tortuous and fruitless federal war on drugs.

Now evidence is surfacing that drug violence is affecting Mexican society more broadly than government officials want to admit. One example is that “working” for the mob in Mexico, in many cases, may not be voluntary. Some cartel employees, particularly individuals with technical and engineering skills that the mobsters need, seem to have been recruited at gunpoint.

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Surgical Strikes in the Drug Wars

Mark Kleiman, Foreign Affairs, 8/25/11

More than a thousand people die each month in drug-dealing violence in Mexico, and the toll has been rising. In some parts of the country, the police find themselves outgunned by drug traffickers and must rely on the armed forces. Meanwhile, the United States suffers from the widespread abuse of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, and cannabis; violence and disorder surrounding retail drug markets; property theft and violent crime committed by drug abusers; and mass incarceration, including half a million people behind bars for drug offenses and at least as many for crimes committed for money to buy drugs.

Current policies, clearly, have unsatisfactory results. But what is to replace them? Neither of the standard alternatives — a more vigorous pursuit of current antidrug efforts or a system of legal availability for currently proscribed drugs — offers much hope. Instead, it is time for Mexico and the United States to consider a set of less conventional approaches.

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