Whack-a-mole: Mexican lawmaker: Jobs, education key to fighting drug war - CNN.com

This is an extremely interesting interview. The PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) is described here as the "opposition" party, because the Presidency is now held by the PAN (National Action Party). But PRI was the authoritarian ruler of Mexico for seventy years, until 2000. The general opinion in Mexico is that PRI will re-take the presidency in the 2012 election. 

Thus, this interview with one of the leaders of PRI gives us some hints of how PRI may look at - and perhaps revise - the military war on the drug cartels, which has been PAN President Calderon's signiture priority.

Mexican lawmaker: Jobs, education key to fighting drug war - CNN.com: "Mexico's government must create jobs and improve education to help fight drug trafficking, the country's senate president said in an interview with CNN en Espanol.

"Together they form a true strategy for fighting crime and violence," said Sen. Manlio Fabio Beltrones Rivera, a top official in Mexico's opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party. Currently, Mexico's war on drugs is a "fight of firepower between criminals and the state," he said. ....

Beltrones said the debate over legalizing marijuana is an issue Mexican officials will have to tackle 'sooner or later. But we could not do it without developing a strategy with the United States, which is the drug's largest consumer... Crime and drug trafficking, which are transnational problems, need international solutions,' he said." Nov. 12, 2010