This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, July 17th, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The rise of both drug-related violence and populism in Mexico are troubling and unfortunately

they're also related.

Ian Vasquez directs the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity.

He says drug crackdowns have done little to stem either the flow of

drugs for the violence that surrounds the drug trade.

It's turning out that 2017 is probably going to be the most violent year on record in Mexico

since the Mexican government started taking records on this some 20 years ago, they reported that May was the most violent month so far in 20 years.

For the year up until that month,

almost 10,000 drug deaths have occurred.

And this is occurring after a few years where drug violence has had gone down.

Remember that the current president, Enrique Peña Nied Annette was elected in 2012 on a campaign rejecting the drug

violence that had been racking Mexico for years. That previous president, President Calderon, had come in the office in 2006

and immediately he declared a war on drugs and a war on the drug cartels and at that point drug violence in Mexico just skyrocketed

and so did corruption and all of the problems associated with prohibition and the drug

war during that president's term in office which is six

years nearly there were nearly 120,000 deaths. So this became a huge political issue and the current president came in

and campaigned against it and the populace rejected those policies and elected him.

For a while it looked like he wasn't following the same policies,

but soon enough he started following this

capture and kill the drug kingpin strategy.

...