Mexico’s Drug War

Mexico’s Drug War
In 2006, former president of Mexico, Felipe Calderón, launched a massive crackdown against drug traffickers. This escalated a conflict that would contribute to the deaths of tens of thousands of people in drug-related violence. To help with the matter the United States has supplied funding and intelligence to increase Mexico's institutional capacity to address drug trafficking. With its primary focus has been on stanching the flow of drugs into the country and domestic law enforcement (Lee, 2014). While unsure of how to address Mexico’s festering strife, analysts agree that the United States was on drug is a failure and necessitates a new approach. The United States are gradually moving toward legalization and decriminalization of marijuana, which is one of the primary substances involved in the drug war.
“The Collapse of Mexico, its Civil War Comes to America” discloses that the battle between Mexican drug cartels threatens to turn America’s southern neighbor into a failed nation-state and has spilled deeper into U.S. territory than anyone has imagined (Newsmax, 2011). Many would say that Americans are addicted to drugs. According to the U.S. State Department, 90 percent of cocaine enters the U.S. through the Mexican border. These cartels also manufacture 80 percent of the crystal meth that is sold in America, 14 percent of the heroin and a majority of the marijuana. The U.S. Department of Justice, Mexico is a major supplier of heroin to the U.S. market and it is the largest foreign supplier of methamphetamine. It is said that these productions have increased since 2005 (Lee, 2014).
Mexico’s drug war was reported to have claimed nearly 40,000 lives since 2006 in the nightmares of beheadings, mass graves, as ...

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...ly visible “foot soldiers”. Brookings Institution’s, Vanda Felbab-Brown advocates aggressively targeting the middle layer, which is intrinsic to the operational capacity and is not as easily replaceable (Lee, 2014). Vanda also supports a more hierarchical approach to targeting traffickers, prioritizing those that are most violent, rather than "lashing out in an indiscriminate manner whenever any intelligence comes in.”

References:
CNN World. (2014). Mexico Drug War Fast Facts. Retrieved from: http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/02/world/americas/mexico-drug-war-fast-facts/
Lee, B. (2014). Council on Foreign Relations. Mexico’s Drug War. Retrieved from: http://www.cfr.org/mexico/mexicos-drug-war/p13689
Newsmax (2011). Mexico Drug War Spills Across US Border. Retrieved from: http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/mexicodrugwar-usborder-violence-immigration/2011/06/14/id/400068/