Legalization: As The Drug War Rages On, Will Mexico Surrender?

As The Drug War Rages On, Will Mexico Surrender? : "...

Drug trafficking has long gone on in Mexico, and for many decades operated under the eye of the government, according to analysts. Mexico changing politics has, in effect, changed the way drug cartels operate. The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century. After 71 years in power, the party finally lost the presidency in 2000.

From the 1960s through the '80s, organized crime was intertwined with the government, according to Diego Enrique Osorno, a Mexican journalist and author of the recently published history, The Sinaloa Cartel. "In this period, you have to remember that the PRI had control of everything," Osorno says. The PRI controlled the press, the oil fields, politics and even the narcotics trade. Then the PRI lost the presidency in 2000 to Vicente Fox and his National Action Party, or PAN, and Mexico was left with a monster it couldn't control. ....

In the Mexican Congress, there have been calls for the country to give up the drug war entirely and legalize all narcotics. Terrence Poppa, a reporter at the El Paso Herald Post, (who has written a book about the Mexican cartels), says that if the United States were to decriminalize drugs it would help eliminate the huge profits garnered by the brutal cartels. "In my view, the best reason for ending drug prohibition is to save Mexico, to save the democracy of Mexico that the Mexican people have struggled so hard to gain," he says. (our emphasis)

Whoever wins the 2012 elections is expected to take a new approach toward the cartels. Many voters may even hope for a return to the days when the PRI let organized crime run drugs unfettered up to the U.S. border, but kept the violence off the streets." August 6, 2010, NPR