when i was 17 i hitch- hiked down from san francisco to mexico city, at tijuana which back then was a shack town, with a dirty bus station and some wayward gringo's like myself hanging out looking for cheap weed and an adventure into the unknown. everyone back in the city told me not to go, they said it was very dangerous, i never saw much danger there yet it was all around me according to 'el narco' ioan grillo's brilliant journalistic examination of the mexican drug wars.
i met a lot of mexican people, mostly poor farmers, we shared breakfasts in run down kitchens in the middle of desert towns, eggs usually tortilla and some milky drink with honey, they offered me places to stay and gifts, leather bags, knives, scarves, i was slightly apprehensive and nervous but it was because my western mind thought these people may slit my throat while i sleep and steal my passport. my head was filled with anxiety but all my american fear i held towards the southern land mass of old mexico seemed to evaporate as i spent time with these people who showed me nothing but generosity and hospitality. 
all i wanted to do was find peyote and introduce myself to quetzalcoatl and xochiquetzal, i was a teenager after all, just read castaneda, anyway wandering around the mountains was quite a lovely serene experience, quite spectacular and there were traces of aztec civilisation to be found, pyramids and rock pictograms and a burial ground that i instinctively knew to avoid, this was untouched terrain off the beaten track, no one wanted to come here, no one ever came, eco tourism had not even been invented.
later when i went to mexico city i felt disorientated by the straight lines of man, big volume buildings and a subway system that was one of the cleanest i'd ever travelled in, i was disorientated by the art museum which held the best art i have ever seen, massive canvas, bright colours and wide staircases, i was disorientated by the traffic and the people swarm, the noise, the pollution above ground that never met the pristine underground, the sheer volume of people moving through and the cosmopolitan culture. i never saw the stuff ioan writes about but it was there being played out under my nose. how sad that a country with so much to offer, so much beauty should be at war with itself. ioan says it started with columbians moving into the business, flooding the relatively peaceful marijuana market with cocaine and thus bringing a brutality and horror. the situation went from bad to worse when the politicians started using the drug wars as an election campaign tool, and a way to control the left wingers who wanted equitable terms and a reasonable deal from the government, cheap housing, health and amenities and when the ever growing cartels (which was an invented term thought up by the media) started hiring the military to do their dirty work. they also hired columbian death squads, and these squads did not just kill the oppositions men, it killed their whole family. these squads did not just use assassination, they used the tactics of terror, and thus mexico became the most violent place on earth, fortunately i had left while all this was occurring. the public were living in total fear as death became arbitrary, the authorities were paid off, corrupted by wealth, those that attempted to change the field and bring some sort of justice were murdered, often in their homes, along with their families, they were killed in the most horrific way so that others would be deterred.  
the innocent had no protection, everything became so corrupt, the police were earning more from drugs than police work. 
and all the while the american demand for cocaine grew and grew as i guess it's highly addictive, the cartels made billions from it, and when meth was added to the mix they made even more and with the increase in cash the more greed spread and directly proportional to that was the violence. 
this is the war on drugs, it's failed miserably. i'm halfway through el narco, and i can honestly say that unless these things become legalised and controlled as part of a taxable income by authorities the crime that goes with dealers and cartels will remain, the war on drugs was never really thought out with consideration. it's a dumb move by dumb people who took a political approach to a human need. the fact is drugs are everywhere, people take them, they always have, you cannot divide one drug from the other when there is demand, you can regulate it. especially when alcohol is legal and accepted.
i am so sad to see what happened in mexico, one of the loveliest places i ever went to, with such great people, they deserve better.
currently the drug cartels target journalists who try to write about it, many have been decapitated, their families murdered and dumped by the roadside as a message to others. cocaine comes with this karma, you can see it when people who use it start talking, you can see it in their eyes, feel it in their energy. until it comes without loss of life i think it really belongs with alcohol and cigarettes. in the dumb drug category.