Abstract
Felipe CalderÓn, Mexico’s president from December 2006 to December 2012, left a troublesome legacy for his successor, Enrique Peña Nieto. One of CalderÓn’s first initiatives as president had been to authorize a military-led offensive against the country’s powerful drug cartels. That strategy backfired badly. During the CalderÓn years, an estimated 60,000 people perished in the drug war that convulsed the country. Another 20,000 people went missing during that period, and many, if not most, were likely victims of the carnage as well.1 The plague of drug-related violence also became a worsening problem for the United States and Mexico’s neighbors in Central America.
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Notes
Robert C. Bonner, “The New Cocaine Cowboys: How to Defeat Mexico’s Drug Cartels,” Foreign. Affairs 89, no. 4 (July-August 2010): 40.
For a more detailed discussion of such “bogus solutions,” see Ted Galen Carpenter, The Fire Next Door: Mexico’s Drug Violence and the Danger to America (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2012), 219–239.
For a discussion of some of the international legal and diplomatic issues involved in ending drug prohibition, see Ted Galen Carpenter, “Ending the International Drug War,” in Jefferson Fish, ed., How to Legalize Drugs (London: Aronson, 1998), 293–309.
George W. Grayson, Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State? (New Brunswick, Nj: Transaction, 2010), 254.
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© 2015 Ted Galen Carpenter
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Carpenter, T.G. (2015). The Drug War’s Damaging Impact on Mexico and Its Neighbors. In: Brienen, M.W., Rosen, J.D. (eds) New Approaches to Drug Policies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137450999_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137450999_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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