Research Library

Mexico Center director Tony Payan considers whether citizens and the government should together combat organized crime in Mexico.

Using a public health approach to study drug-related murders on the U.S.-Mexico border, the authors conclude the region is experiencing a "violence epidemic."

Mexico Center director Tony Payan testifies before a House subcommittee on the major threats to the implementation of Mexico's energy reforms.

Nonresident fellow Gary Hale, former chief of intelligence in the Houston Field Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration, pulls no punches in a blog on the escape of Mexican drug lord Chapo Guzman.

How will Mexico's government and military respond in the long run to the humiliating escape of Chapo Guzman, the country's most powerful drug trafficker?

The core strategies of the U.S. War on Drugs are eradication, interdiction and incarceration. After a 40-year and trillion-dollar effort, illicit drugs remain available to meet a remarkably stable demand. Drawing on decades of government-gathered and publicly available data, William Martin, director of the Drug Policy Program, and contributing expert Jerry Epstein contend that U.S. drug policy is premised on incorrect assumptions, aims at the wrong targets and can never succeed. But because these data run counter to a century of anti-drug propaganda, they play only a small role in public policy, mass-media presentation and popular perception. In this policy report, Martin and Epstein call for a reexamination of the data and sweeping revision of existing strategies. They urge formation of a politically independent national scientific commission, its members chosen by the National Academy of Sciences, in consultation with the NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services, to facilitate open examination and honest consideration of alternatives to current failed or flawed policies.

The relationship between Mexico and Texas is in dire need of reassessment, given the chasm between the reality of the countries’ economic and cultural relationship and the political rhetoric that surrounds it.

The mysterious death of a special prosecutor who accused Argentina’s president of “an alliance with terrorists” has shaken the nation. If the prosecutor’s allegations prove to be true, the scandal will test whether democracy in Argentina means that all citizens — including the president — are accountable under the law.

In 1972, a National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, comprising establishment figures chosen mostly by President Richard Nixon himself, issued a report that declared that “neither the marihuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to public safety” and recommended that Congress and state legislatures decriminalize the use and casual distribution of marijuana and seek means other than prohibition to discourage use. President Nixon ignored the report and Congress declined to consider its recommendations, but during the 40-plus years since its publication, at least 37 states have acted to refashion a crazy-quilt collection of prohibitions, nearly always in the direction favored by the commission. The specifics vary by state, but most reform legislation has followed one of three formulas: decriminalization of marijuana possession, legalization of marijuana for medical use, or legalization of marijuana for adult recreational use. In this issue brief, authors Katharine Neill and William Martin examine the facts and fears surrounding each of these options.