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State of war Sam Quinones -- Mexico's criminal justice system is too weak to stop the drug cartels William Booth -- Mexico's military response to drug violence is not working Nik Steinberg -- Corruption, drug cartels, and the Mexican police Ted Galen Carpenter -- Mexican government's drug strategy violates civil liberties Laura Carlsen -- Mexico's drug war has similarities to the war on terror Mario Loyola -- Central American countries should legalize drugs Jamie Dettmer -- US drug policy needs to change to end Mexico's drug war Jorge Castañeda -- Mexico's drug war: the battle without hope Malcolm Beith -- Mexico drug war: Enrique Pena Nieto could target small gangs Micheal Weissenstein -- Merida initiative is misguided and needs to be recalibrated Manuel Pérez-Rocha

House Democrats have been loudly proclaiming their intention to pass legislation that would rein in drug-price increases. But when it comes to actually passing significant bills, reality has not matched rhetoric.

Since 1980, the populations of state and federal prisons have more than quadrupled. This has in large part been attributed to increased law enforcement in the wake of the War on Drugs. Data-validated simulation modeling is used to examine the compositional dynamics of the drug offender population incarcerated in California prisons over the period 1980–1998, as well as to prospectively evaluate the impact of the Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act of 2000 (the Act), which prohibits incarceration and mandates treatment for first-time nonviolent offenders convicted of simple drug possession. The analyses show that the drug offender population changed in significant ways from 1980 to 1998. The prospective analyses indicate that the Act will have some impacts on the composition of the incarcerated drug offender population that are consistent with the objective of selective incapacitation of dangerous offenders, but will not reduce the proportion of prison space overall devoted to housing drug offenders.

The paper assesses AIDS and drug policy development in Germany between 1982 and 1996 and relates it to the development of epidemiological research in HIV among injecting drug users (IDUs). In a historical review, this paper outlines how results of epidemiological HIV surveillance studies among IDUs and public health responses were mutually dependent. The authors argue that a specific development in HIV policy encouraged a confounding of basic methodological concepts (validity and precision) in epidemiological research, which in turn led to misinterpretation of available data on seroprevalence trends in Germany. In order to overcome methodological shortcomings under given legal and practical restrictions, pragmatic approaches to increase validity of seroprevalence and risk factor estimations are discussed.

This paper explores the question of what we can consider to be real in drug policy. It examines two common approaches in drug policy analysis (and criminology more broadly); radical constructionist critique and successionist data science. It shows how researchers using both approaches have produced valuable findings, but also demonstrates the theoretical incoherence of their ontological assumptions, based on their shared 'flat ontology'. The radical constructionist detachment of knowledge from an independently existing reality – seen in some qualitative studies - is shown to be unsustainably self-defeating. As acknowledged by Annemarie Mol, it is analytically 'paralyzing'. This leads to two common inconsistencies in radical constructionist studies; crypto-empiricism and ersatz epistemic egalitarianism. The Humean successionist approach of econometric data science is also shown to be unsustainable and unable to provide explanations of identified patterns in data. Four consequent, limiting characteristics of this type of research are discussed: causal inference at a distance, monofinality, limited causal imagination, and overly confident causal claims. The paper goes on to describe and exemplify a critical realist ontology for drug policy analysis based on Roy Bhakra's 'Realist Theory of Science'. The 'depth ontology' of this approach enables more deeply explanatory, methodologically eclectic and democratically inclusive analysis of drug policy development and effects.