Gretchen Peters certainly has a sense of timing.

As summer arrives in Afghanistan, it's not just the temperature that is heating up.

Phillip S. Smith, Writer/Editor

Late last week, both houses of the Mexican Congress approved a bill that would decriminalize the possession of

Beware San Malverde! Watch out, Santa Muerte!

Police in small town Tenaha, Texas, near the Louisiana line, have found a way of turning law enforcement into a lucrative racket.

The United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) met this week in Vienna to draft a

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It's jail and prison guards gone wild this week, and a veteran California cop whose pill problem got the best of him. Let's get to it:

A federal judge in Atlanta Tuesday sent three former Atlanta narcotics officers to prison for their roles in a misbegotten drug raid that ended in the death of a 92-year-old woman and shone a distu

David Borden, Executive Director

The Cato Institute and the World Affairs Council of Washington, D.C. invite you to a Policy Forum:

Mexico’s Drug War: The Growing Crisis on Our Southern Border

Featuring:

Ted Galen Carpenter, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute
Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance Network
Vanda Felbab-Brown, Foreign Policy Fellow at the Brookings Institution
and Daniel T. Griswold, Director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies, Cato Institute

As the new Obama administration surveys possible national security threats confronting the United States, policymakers need to recognize that an especially lethal one is brewing close to home: the increasing drug-related violence in Mexico. Since January 2007 there have been more than 6,800 drug-war related deaths in Mexico, and Mexican drug cartels continue to expand their operations in American cities. Washington’s response has been to expand its prohibitionist efforts with the Mérida Initiative, a U.S.–Mexico anti-drug-trafficking program. Historically, however, prohibitionist policies have had little success in reducing the flow of drugs. Instead, those policies have led to increased turmoil and corruption. Please join us as we explore more effective alternatives for the new administration.

This forum is funded by a grant from the Open Society Institute.

Luncheon to follow.

Cato Policy Forums and luncheons are free of charge. To register, visit www.cato.org, e-mail events@cato.org, fax (202) 371-0841 or call (202) 789-5229 by 11:00 a.m. Wednesday, February 18.

News media inquiries only (no registrations), please call (202) 789-5200.

If you can’t make it to the Cato Institute, watch this Forum live online at www.cato.org.

President-elect Barack Obama met Monday with Mexican President Felipe Calderón to discuss bilateral issues of major importance for the two countries.

In the last three years, South American cocaine traffickers aiming at lucrative European markets have increasingly turned to West Africa as a way station in the intercontinental trade.

Two cops are headed for prison in New Mexico, and one in California. Let's get to it:

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the repeal of alcohol Prohibition, when Utah -- Utah!--became the 38th state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, repealing the 18th Amendment and t

Immortalized by the hit HBO series "The Wire," Baltimore's Eastern District is one tough neighborhood in one of the country's toughest towns.

Further evidence that the Mexican drug war is making progress…in the exact wrong direction:

MONTERREY, Mexico, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Companies in Mexico are scrapping plans to float shares on the stock exchange for fear of raising their profile amid a brutal drug war and a surge in kidnappings, the bourse president said on Tuesday.

Stock exchange President Guillermo Prieto said that aside from market volatility in the past two months due to the global financial crisis, crime was a major issue for firms thinking about initial public offerings (IPOs).
…
Going public to raise funds for expansion requires far greater company disclosure and a higher public profile for company executives who go on roadshows to attract investors.

This is a whole new level of economic disruption, as the drug war begins to chip away at financial institutions. If this kind of thing continues, there’s no limit to how far-reaching the damage could become.

Violence and corruption are just the first symptoms of the disease of drug prohibition. If left untreated, the sickness spreads throughout every social institution, weakening anything it touches.

This is the kind of crap we’re subsidizing with our massive financial support of Mexico’s war on drugs:

MEXICO CITY (AP) - A major drug cartel has infiltrated the Mexican attorney general's office, and one cartel worker says he even spied on DEA operations from inside U.S. Embassy, Mexican prosecutors said Monday.
…
The revelations of corruption inside the control centers of the U.S.-Mexican anti-drug effort were a major blow to President Felipe Calderon's anti-drug campaign, in which he has sent tens of thousands of troops and federal police across Mexico to combat violent cartels.
…
Assistant Attorney General Marisela Morales said two top employees of her organized-crime unit and at least three federal police agents assigned to it may have been passing information on surveillance targets and potential raids for at least four years. [Guardian]

If the Mexican drug war were a Fortune 500 company, would you invest in it? Seriously, can anyone prevent our drug war donations from ending up in the hands of the cartels? This is an extraordinary mess, a complete mockery of everything we’re trying to accomplish and we have no clue how deep it goes.

There isn’t a single thing happening in Mexico right now that could be construed as progress in the war on drugs. To the contrary, every day that goes by brings new evidence of the fundamental failure of our strategy on every conceivable level.

The NATO and US forces battling Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents in Afghanistan are on the verge of expanding their counterinsurgency efforts by getting more deeply involved in trying to suppress th

As Mexican President Felipe Calderón's war on drug trafficking organizations nears the two-year mark and the violence shows no sign of letting up, a new

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