Measuring Success in the Drug War: Criteria to Determine Progress in Mexico’s Efforts to Defeat Narco-traffickers

President Felipe Calderón is the first Mexican president to declare a “war on drugs.”  Diana Villiers Negroponte writes that, although Calderón’s predecessors did attempt to contain drug-trafficking in high-risk states, Calderón is confronting the drug lords head on with a determination to destroy cartels and limit the sale of drugs to Mexico’s youth.