August 29, 2011 11:54AM # Stop the Madness, President Calderon By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE The *Wall Street Journal* covers a single day in [Mexico’s drug war](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904787404576528413479614524.html?KEYWORDS=calderon), a day on which 25 people died in separate incidents. The summary paragraphs tell a story of failure: > Since President Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006, declaring war on traffickers, roughly 43,000 people have been killed in drug-related homicides here, according to government figures and newspaper estimates. The pace of killings is escalating. More than half the dead, 22,000, were killed in the past 18 months, a rate of one every 35 minutes.… > > > Mexico’s murder rate has more than doubled, to 22 deaths per 100,000 residents in 2010, in just four years, a period that parallels the drug war. Before that, it had been falling steadily. In the U.S. the murder rate is about 5 per 100,000. This policy is not working. President Calderon, [I beseech you](http://www.cyberussr.com/hcunn/q-cromwell-beseech.html), in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken. Read the [advice](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11746) of President Fox’s foreign minister or this [discussion](https://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v31n3/cpr31n3-4.pdf) by Cato’s Ted Galen Carpenter. American policymakers should also recognize that this crisis threatens us — and that [we can help to end it](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9932). ##### Related Tags [Defense and Foreign Policy](https://www.cato.org/defense-foreign-policy), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).