Mexico president rules out new war on drugs amid shock over mayor’s reported beheading

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday ruled out launching a new war against drug cartels, as she presented a national security plan aimed at reducing raging criminal violence.

Sheinbaum, the first woman to lead the Latin American nation, said her government would prioritise tackling the root causes of crime, as well as making better use of intelligence.

“The war on drugs will not return,” the leftist president told a news conference, referring to an offensive launched in 2006 involving the military and supported by the United States.

Since then, a spiral of criminal violence has left more than 450,000 people dead and tens of thousands missing.

Sheinbaum, a former Mexico City mayor who was sworn in on October 1, pledged to stick to her predecessor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” strategy of using social policy to address the causes of crime.

“We are not looking for extrajudicial executions, which is what was happening before. What are we going to use? Prevention, attention to the causes, intelligence and presence” of authorities, she said.