Author Archive

Raúl Bejarano Romero

Research assistant at the Drug Policy Program at CIDE, Mexico. Licenciatura in political science and public administration from UNAM and a masters in political science from CIDE. His research focuses on organized crime, illicit markets, political violence and human rights.

If it is part and parcel for democracies to (1) protect individual rights, (2) safeguard its citizenship from serious abuses of power, and (3) produce fair and reasonable laws which are impartially enforced, then we can assert that the misnamed “war on drugs” severely corrodes Mexican democracy. In general, the “war on drugs” is a punitive strategy which aims to increase drug prices and punish consumers, under the assumption that attacking supply can create a world without drugs. In Mexico, what is referred to as the “war on drugs” escalated in 2006, when then-president Felipe Calderón started “a frontal war against organized crime”, allegedly, to “keep drugs from reaching our children”. Calderón did so right after a highly competitive election …