Inconceivable!

Calderón calls the lack of a United States national database of drug trafficking networks inconceivable. Considering that the creation of a national criminal database in Mexico is a condition of the Mérida Initiative, he has a point. There are other similar examples of a disconnect between the US view of Mexico's drug problem and its handling of its own. For instance, government officials and media frequently lament the 4,000 deaths in Mexico attributable to drug violence since the beginning of Calderón's term, but in the same time period 25,000 Americans have been murdered, and I'd bet dollars to donuts that more than 4,000 of those had something to do with the drug trade (unfortunately, I've been unable to find any information that measures drug crime as a whole across the nation). The violence in Mexico is obviously more threatening for a number of reasons, but it exists on both sides of the border.

The United States is rightly encouraging Mexico to approach things a little differently, but what changes in drug policy is the US considering? The oft repeated bit about the need for Americans to recognize their role in fueling the Mexican drug trade is rarely more than a rhetorical sop. Perhaps one way for Mexico and the United States to get over the flap about conditions in the Mérida Initiative would be for the US to impose the same conditions included in the pact on itself. That way, the Mérida conditions could be presented as a list of governmental past practices for all nations involved (Central America too). It would still ruffle nationalist feathers in Mexico, but it's better than a unilateral requirement.