The war on drugs has gained renewed attention over the last decade for a variety of reasons. The ongoing economic and social experiments—in some fifteen U.S. states, Uruguay, and, most recently, Mexico—with the legalization of marijuana are evidence of changing attitudes and policies. Latin American leaders such as Colombia's Juan Manuel Santos and Guatemala's Otto Pérez Molina were outspoken advocates in favor of rethinking how the drug war has been applied in their region. Whatever the new dynamics might be, we normally associate the advent of the war on drugs with Richard Nixon's presidency in the early 1970s, when he adopted a law-and-order approach to surging illicit drug consumption in the United States. Even Nixon's original embrace of the drug war is eclipsed by more contemporary elements such as the rise of Colombian drug kingpins in the 1980s and 1990s and Mexico's current internecine drug cartel feuds.
In this timely...