Eduardo Verdugo / AP Photo
It’s Day 1 of her first trip to Mexico as secretary of state, and Hillary Clinton has already made a startling admission about America’s war on drugs: “Clearly what we’ve been doing has not worked. It is unfair...to be creating a situation where people are holding the Mexican government and people responsible” for our addiction problems. Clinton’s statement is the “most sweeping yet by a top Obama administration official accepting a US role in the drug havoc in Mexico,” The Washington Post reports, and squares with the general consensus in Latin America over the last 30 years—that it is unfairly blamed for America’s insatiable appetite for drugs. Clinton’s conciliatory tone comes the White House is ramping up its support for Mexico’s efforts to end narco-violence, and follows several highly publicized reports examining whether Mexico is doomed to become a “failed state.”