In an interview with PBS on Tuesday, Mexico’s President-elect, Enrique Pena Nieto, said legalization should be part of the debate on how to reduce drug use and violence.

While insisting he was not in favor of legalizing drugs himself, he said, “I’m in favor of opening a new debate in the strategy in the way we fight drug trafficking. It is quite clear that after several years of this fight against drug trafficking, we have more drug consumption, drug use and drug trafficking. That means we are not moving in the right direction. Things are not working.”

“I’m not saying we should legalize,” he repeated. “But we should debate in Congress, in the hemisphere and especially the U.S. should participate in this broad debate.”

Mexico’s new President isn’t taking a side yet, but how else can the drug black market be decimated but through legalization? Mexico has been using the military against the cartels for 5 years now, and at least 50,000 people are dead because of it. What other way is there to greatly reduce the violence?

The illegal drug market in The United States fuels much of the violence south of our border, all the way down to South America. And those governments are getting tired of it. Some are doing what they can to depress the black market in their own countries, but not much can be done until the black market in the U.S. is wiped out.

- Joe Klare