Mexican Drug War

Mexico's wave of prohibition-related violence grinds on, and Ciudad Juárez remains the epicenter.

For Mexico, drug prohibition is the deadly gift that keeps on giving. A thousand people have been killed in the past 40 days, and this year's death toll has now passed 6,000. And it seems to be accelerating.

Vicente Fox sicced the army on the so-called drug cartels when he was president of Mexico, but now he says his predecessor, Felipe Calderon, has gone too far down that path. It's time for the troops to return to the barracks, he said over the weekend.

Ciudad Juarez continues to earn the title of Mexico's drug war murder capital, but there was plenty of prohibition-fueled killing to go around this past week.

Another week, another grim death toll in Mexico. September was the bloodiest month this year.

Mexico's foreign minister said this week that the high death toll in his country's drug war was a sign his government's policy was correct. If that's the case, he just got more confirmation, as the body count continues to rise.

This year's Mexican drug wars body count is closing in on 5,000, with more than 200 added to the death toll last week.

Here's the latest on the prohibition-related carnage wracking Mexico.

The drug policy wheel is turning, and the US and its hard-line repressive drug policies are becoming increasingly isolated in the hemisphere as in the past week alone 150 million Latin Americans came under one form of decriminalization or another.

A bill that decriminalizes the possession of small amounts of drug for personal use is now the law of the land in Mexico. Although there was some doubt President Calderon would approve it, it appeared in the official gazette Thursday. It also includes provisions to allow the state and localities to go after small-time drug dealers, a power previously reserved to the federal government.