This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, February 23rd, 2012. I'm Caleb Brown.

More Latin American countries are flirting with ending drug prohibition.

While that's also the good, says Cato Institute Policy analyst one Carlos Adalgo,

laying down arms in the war on drugs won't end the bloody turf battles among rival drug cartels.

Central America is one of the hottest battlegrounds in Washington

hemispheric war against drugs. Most of the cocaine that comes from the Indian

region goes through Central America and then to Mexico and then to the United States.

It is admitted that 90% of the cocaine consuming the US goes through Central America.

And these countries have very weak institutions and they are already among the most violent countries in the world, Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize, Honduras.

And as pressure mounts on Mexican cartels in Mexico, they have been increasingly moving their operations

to Central America and that has created a lot of concern about security in the region.

President Otto Pered Molina won the election in Guatemala a few months ago

promising an iron fist against organized crime and using the army to battle drug cartels.

At some point many people fear that his strategy was going to backfire as it has in Mexico

where President Felipe Calderon took the army out of their

headquarters and into the streets and fight the cartels and crime has skyrocketed

in that country.

But surprisingly, since his inauguration,

President Otto Péd Molina has said

that he supports drug legalization and now that he's going to even propose

drug legalization in Central America in an upcoming summit of Central American

presidents. This is from the Associated Press.

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