ALTHOUGH we should learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others, we persist in following the failed tactics of the US in relation to drugs. Our drug problems, which began in Dublin, have gradually spread throughout the country.

Police have captured a drug kingpin blamed for a vicious turf war that has included bodies hung from bridges and shootouts in central Mexico.

THE decapitated bodies of four men were hung from a bridge in a Mexican city ravaged by fighting between two drug lords.

SOLDIERS killed a top leader of the Sinaloa cartel in a raid on his posh hideout, dealing the biggest blow yet to Mexico’s most powerful drug gang since President Felipe Calderon launched a military offensive against organised crime in 2006.

One of the top three leaders of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartel died in a gunfight with soldiers, ending the long run of a mysterious capo considered a founder of the country’s massive methamphetamine trade.

Federal troops stormed a seaside holiday home and captured one of the country’s most brutal drug lords, the second time in less than a month that Mexico took one of its most powerful traffickers off the streets.

Gunmen sprayed bullets at a restaurant where the mayor of a Texas border town was eating with a Mexican state attorney general and other officials, killing a woman leaving the building.

A MEXICAN governor suspended an entire state police force on Monday to shake up the force after two senior officers were accused of cutting deals with powerful drug traffickers.