Mexico’s biggest problem is the optimized power of drug cartels and organized crime. No government policy to crack down these groups seemed to have worked to solve the problem.
Mexico recently announced it would decriminalize possession of small quantities of drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, LSD, methamphetamines, heroin, and opium if these are for personal use. People who are apprehended by law enforcement for drugs in minimal quantities, and below the set limits, will not be prosecuted. A person intercepted three times while carrying amounts below the limit, however, must by law undergo treatment.
These are desperate measures for obviously desperate times in Mexico. As such, these measures are simply ways to compromise with the lawless situation that has been prevailing.
For the government of President Felipe Calderón, who has spent the last three years immersed in mortal combat with drug cartels, this seems counterproductive. Has his government finally succumbed to drug market realities? Or is it a clever tactic of drug fighters who still hang on to the quixotic belief that they can stop drug suppliers?
What ails Mexico, and which has already become the biggest security problem in the hemisphere, is the power of drug profits that have fueled the subsequently increasing power of organized crime. It’s the power of cold hard cash that seems to have moved around quite plentifully.
To match the viable conditions enjoyed by drug traffickers, of course, is the relentless and unceasing drug demand from the US, just across the border, which is really Mexico’s biggest drug market. Because so many Americans like cocaine and marijuana, the drug business has thrived for the past four decades.
With senseless deaths and killings in the name of drugs still a raging reality, and the drug business still flourishing in spite of army troops battling the drug syndicates, Mexico’s war on drugs is apparently a failure.
