Sometimes a politician goes on a glad-handing trip and says all the diplomatic things he or she is supposed to say but ends up sounding like an insipid shill. For example, Obama is in Mexico City, where the issues of the day are immigration and rampant, murderous drug cartels.

"I think that President Calderon has done an outstanding and heroic job in dealing with what is a big problem right now along the borders with the drug cartels," Obama said on CNN.

But if by “outstanding and heroic,” Obama means that Mexico—with the help of $400 million in US funding last year—is pushing one of the most lethal, unproductive drug-enforcement programs in North America’s history, then, yes, it’s “outstanding and heroic.”

Shootouts and beheadings linked with the drug trade and enforcement killed a record 6,300 people in Mexico last year. Yesterday alone, a dozen people died in a shootout between troops and drug traffickers. The spike in violence coincides with Calderon's attempt to disrupt the cartels. The problem, of course, is that American nostrils are sucking up cocaine from South America, cocaine that is smuggled through Mexico. More specifically, our nostrils are paying top dollar for a cheap, minimally processed agricultural commodity—and poor farmers, cartel mules, and corrupt cops will do whatever it takes to get Americans those drugs to pay the bills.

(Note: Obama didn’t approve the funding, cartels are evil, and cocaine is really addictive stuff. Also, Obama is great, Obama is wonderful, and I would snort the corn out of his shit if I could only get my hands on the stuff.)

But, as Obama said during the campaign, “words mean something.” And he said, “The biggest risk we could take right now is to adopt the same failed policies and same failed politics...”

Um, Mr. President? You've admitted to using cocaine when you were young. And you're smart enough to know that, if you had been unlucky enough to get caught, the same policies you described as “heroic” in Mexico City—the never-ending war on drug growers, dealers, and users—would've landed your ass in prison. No Harvard, no Michelle, no White House. So you of all people shouldn't be running around saying that cracking down on cartels—and perpetuating the violence and injustice stoked by prohibition—is “outstanding and heroic."

Sanho Tree, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a D.C. think tank, has studied international drug policy for the past decade. He's one of the most knowledgeable people on earth about the international drug trade, so I asked him what the fuck to do about this mess.

“The solutions are counterintuitive,” says Tree. “Hands off is perhaps the best way to reduce the violence.”

“The cartels are looking for the upper hand, but by attacking all of them, it keeps them all off balance and they will each try to get the upper hand,” Tree says. “Rival cartels want to move in on each other and seize the best trafficking routes. Like a lot like open-air drug markets, you take one drug dealer off the street and create an open space, and rival dealers will fight it out for that space. So capturing cartel leaders actually increases violence.”

More from Sanho Tree after the jump.