Comments on Mexico drug trafficking from around America

At times, the fight against drug trafficking in Mexico seems hopeless. The Los Angeles Times asked experts and public figures in the United States, Mexico and other parts of Latin America for their views on the problem and what should be done about it. The comments have been edited for space or clarity.

Fernando Rospigliosi

former Peruvian interior minister

The U.S. approach to fighting drugs is, I think, the only program that works. The problem, however, is that the United States is pulling back.

How can we have success? Within the National Police of Peru, I know there are specialized people. They could begin capturing entire bands of traffickers. You must attack on all fronts. It is police work, judicial work; you have to be well-equipped, and, unfortunately, we aren't.

The narco-trafficking problem in Peru has gotten worse in all aspects: the production of cocaine, violence and corruption that comes from that. One of the aggravating factors was the launching of the (U.S.-financed) Plan Colombia, which started to work in the last decade and that has unleashed greater demand for Peruvian coca and cocaine. In addition, you have the increasingly strong entrance of Mexican cartels into Peru, and they have brought a kind of violence never before seen here.

The state attaches little importance to this fight. There was no political will in the previous government nor in the current one, for various reasons, including fear and the scourge of corruption. What does the state do? Small arrests, small seizures, but no defined, broad policy for confronting the problem.

Sergio Fajardo

former mayor of Medellin, Colombia, where violence is significantly reduced

Colombia's experience is that you get rid of some narcos and others come in and take their place. Their weapons are destruction, death and the ability to corrupt many facets of the state. You can't leave the slightest space in our cities or legitimate society for them to occupy. That's very important.

The doors into the drug world are very wide for the unemployed and the youth living in the poor barrios. You have to close or reduce the size of that doorway. How? With opportunities, creating jobs in those barrios with education and by establishing the state's presence in each community. We learned that many who entered criminality because they had no opportunity will return to society if they can go to work.

My advice is that [Mexico] should be thinking about the poor boy standing on a street corner, looking at that narco doorway and thinking about entering.

Maria Elena Morera

president of Mexicans United Against Crime

(Her husband survived a kidnapping, but three of his fingers were severed to pressure the family for ransom.)

Our demands can be summed up in one phrase: to have good laws and make those laws obeyed by reconstructing our institutions:

1. A true national crime-prevention policy that contains programs, city by city, that diagnose the problems and set forth remedies with time limits and budgets.

2. A unified national criminal database that uses top technology to collect, analyze and exploit information on crimes and criminals.

3. Reconstruct federal, municipal and state police forces.

4. Reform of the penal justice system. We want to unify the penal code so that all crimes are punished and pursued in the same way in all the country.

5. We want a national strategy against kidnapping, which should include the following points: Fortifying kidnap investigation units at the federal level, and the state prosecutors at all levels. Swifter prosecution, because slow justice is no justice. Monitoring of convicted or accused kidnappers in prison. Better tracking of cellphone use to pinpoint locations of users and their identities. Empower authorities to confiscate assets of alleged criminals. Establish a national registry based on fingerprints of all people residing in Mexico. Creation of a citizen watchdog, who has authority to denounce corrupt and inefficient officials.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Mexican filmmaker ("Babel," "21 Grams," "Amores Perros")

I have always thought that the only possible way to eradicate this plague is to legalize drugs. While the United States keeps consuming these amounts of drugs and selling guns the way it does, there's no way our country will win this war.

The economic and gun power of the cartels has corrupted the entire Mexican country. Like humidity, it has permeated every level, and the economic benefits of it are so strong that it has become a national income. The war is lost. To legalize drugs would bring another set of problems, but at least those will be more transparent.

Terry Nelson

federal agent for 30 years with U.S. Border Patrol, Customs Service and Department of Homeland Security

Busting top traffickers doesn't work, (because) others just do battle to replace them. Despite the obvious failure of our drug-control strategy, the public discourse has focused primarily on continuing to wage the "drug war."

Mandatory prison sentences and interdiction efforts have little effect on drug use. This year the World Health Organization found that the U.S. has the highest marijuana- and cocaine-use rates, despite having some of the harshest sentences.

We won't be able to expand treatment and prevention efforts until we stop spending so much money enforcing ineffective penalties, building new prisons and buying fancy cars and helicopters for law-enforcement agencies. As we begin to treat problematic drug use as a public-health issue, it will become much easier to prevent the death, disease and addiction that have expanded under the criminal-justice mentality of prohibition.

There will always be some who want to use drugs, and — as long as drugs are illegal — many willing to risk imprisonment or death to make huge profits supplying them. My experience as a federal agent tells me that legalizing and effectively regulating drugs will stop drug-market crime and violence by putting major cartels and gangs out of business.

The Department of Justice reported (this month) that Mexican cartels are America's "greatest organized-crime threat" because they "control drug distribution in most U.S. cities." If what we've been doing worked at all, we wouldn't be battling Mexican drug dealers in our cities or anywhere else. There's one surefire way to bankrupt them, but when will our leaders talk about it?