Politics Outside US

With the Mexican drug war's popularity plummeting and calls for legalizing marijuana get louder, Luis Hernandez Navarro describes what he sees as the price of President Calderón's popularity bid -- 29,000 dead, human rights leaders murdered, and the Mexican constitution violated.

In lieu of ending drug prohibition and stripping the drug traffickers of their ability to function, the Mexican government has put together a $270 million rescue package for Ciudad Juarez. The campaign is called "Todos Somos Juárez" -- "We are all Juarez". Few believe the campaign can turn the city around anytime soon.

Unfortunately, the Gaza Strip's de-facto government adopted an Egyptian law that permits the execution of convicted drug dealers, and it's using it.

Sex Party president and Victorian Senate candidate Fiona Patten said the party would push for the decriminalization of personal drug use if it won a seat in Australia's federal parliament. The policy calls for the decriminalization, not legalization, of possession and consumption of drugs for personal use, up to a quantity of up to 14 days' supply for one person.

Thousands of Mexican journalists demonstrated during the weekend as part of protests across Mexico asking authorities to do more to safeguard members of the news media from drug prohibition-fueled violence. Aggression against journalists has increased from both law enforcement agents and drug trafficking organizations.

From the 1960s through the ’80s, organized crime was intertwined with the government, according to Diego Enrique Osorno, a Mexican journalist and author of the recently published history, The Sinaloa Cartel. Whoever wins the 2012 elections is expected to take a new approach toward the cartels. Many voters may hope for a return to the days when the PRI let organized crime run drugs unfettered up to the U.S. border, but kept the violence off the streets.

Drug prohibition can even lead to governments being overthrown. Mexican President Felipe Calderon has warned that drug gangs are seeking to replace the state and impose their own law in parts of the country. The gangs were imposing fees like taxes in areas they dominated and trying to impose their own laws by force of arms, said Calderon.