The Mexican State’s involvement in the fight against drugs has gone through several stages marked chiefly by legal and police action in keeping with the model of United States inspiration instituted in the early twentieth century. This paper seeks to show some of the limits to that model, built up in recent years by growing military participation, when the special history of the relationship between drug trafficking and the political authorities in a State party system is left out of account. There are also limits to the freedom of action of the President elected on 2 July 2000 and his government team, who do not belong to the State party, when it comes to determining the content and direction of anti-drug policy.
