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

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday ruled out launching a new war against drug cartels as she presented a national security plan aimed at curbing rampant criminal violence.

Sheinbaum, the first woman to lead the Latin American nation, said her government would prioritize tackling the root causes of crime and better use of intelligence.

“The war on drugs will not return,” the left-wing president told a news conference, referring to an offensive launched in 2006 involving the military and backed 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 mayor of Mexico City who was sworn in on October 1, vowed to stick to her predecessor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s “hugs instead of bullets” strategy of using social policy to tackle the causes of crime to tackle.

“We are not looking for extrajudicial killings, as happened before. What are we going to use? Prevention, attention to the causes, intelligence and presence” of authorities, she said.