It’s no surprise that, as Mexico’s presidency changed hands, commentary on both sides of the border focused on the drug war. During the previous administration, cartel-related killings had more than doubled, despite government crackdowns. The incoming president, promising to make his country safer, announced a controversial new approach. The year? 2006.

That’s right: Felipe Calderon’s “war,” declared only weeks into his presidency, was intended to crush the cartels and reverse the deteriorating security situation. Instead, it unleashed an eightfold increase in killings – 60,000 so far – that not even his harshest critics predicted, devastating proof of how poorly we understand drug-war dynamics.

Leaving office in 2012, Calderon sought to lock in his “no quarter” approach; the cartels, he argues, are in their death throes. But newly inaugurated Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and his Institutional Revolutionary Party (the once all-powerful and highly corrupt PRI) see a crucial opportunity to recalibrate Mexico’s drug policy. Amid the maelstrom of drug-related violence that still racks Mexico, and the overfilling of prisons in the U.S. with drug offenders, such change is welcome.

via Mexico needs laser focus in drug war – SFGate.