Politics Outside US

At least 88 bodies have been found in a complex of mass graves in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, security officials say, likely victims of the country's ongoing drug prohibition war. The graves are the largest concentration ever found in one area in Mexico.

Reports of the Zetas and Maras drug trafficking organizations doing drug deals together or assassinating mutual enemies have been floating around for several years. But human rights workers and police in southern Mexico and Guatemala say they have now formed a more concrete alliance, in which they work together on kidnappings and acts of intimidation and terror.

Recent decapitations and killings have residents on edge over whether local street gangs are mimicking larger drug trafficking organization violence in the nation's capital. "I think of these groups as cells, as franchises," said Alfredo Castillo, attorney general for Mexico state, the suburban area surrounding Mexico City. "As franchises what do they want? They want the know-how, the business model, and in the end, they want their backing in case of an extraordinary problem."

Six out of 10 Mexicans think that drug trafficking organizations are getting the upper hand in the prohibitionist war that President Felipe Calderon launched when he came to office in late 2006, the poll by Demotecnia found. The poll may augur a change in the country's approach to drug trafficking when a new administration takes over after elections next year.

A new study by the Swiss-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center that at least 230,000 people have been displaced in Mexico because of drug prohibition violence and that about half of them may have taken refuge in the United States.

Sadly, the fatal shooting of a 4-year-old girl brought to three the number of children to die violently in the Mexican resort city of Acapulco within the last 72 hours. Fifteen people have been slain in Acapulco since Tuesday, including a woman and two of her grandchildren gunned down inside the family home. The mayhem is taking a toll on tourism in Acapulco, scaring away many of the U.S. college students who would normally flock to the city for spring break.

Mexico's 4-year-plus drug prohibition war push doesn't appear to be making its cities any safer. The new police chief in the violent Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez received a threat on just his second day on the job. Two previous Ciudad Juárez police chiefs have quit since 2008 after drug trafficking organizations killed police officers and threatened to kill more unless they resigned.

Lately, a few British politicians have revived the idea of dispensing taxpayer-funded heroin. Spurred by successful trials in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe, the idea that governments can reduce both addiction and street crime — and maybe bleed black markets dry — by managing drug distribution has gained momentum. "It is time to replace our failed war on drugs with a strict system of legal regulation," a British MP named Bob Ainsworth said at the end of last year. "We must take the trade away from organized criminals and hand it to the control of doctors and pharmacists."