US aiding Mexico in Drug war

Well I"ll try to keep this brief since my opponent may have gone AWOL. My opponent holds that increased US involvement in Mexico (whatever THAT means) would allow the US to win the drug war by eliminating the problem at its source. He says the focus should not be on the US but rather on fixing the problem in Mexico. I assume that he wants an increase in involvement on top of the already existing extensive US involvement in the drug war, which includes joint operations to take out high level targets and more or less unrestricted drone surveillance of Mexico by the US. I do not know exactly what he means by put "way more effort" into Mexico (military, diplomatic, economic aid?) so I"ll just try and make the case that the US should focus more on their end of the drug war which would do more to end it than involving themselves more in Mexico. The main US involvement of the US in Mexico is supporting operations to capture high priority targets. This plan has been successful in taking out some of the higher level cartel members but ineffective at reducing violence (some say it has had the opposite effect including the President of Mexico (2) or reducing the border activity. The current president, Pena Nieto, has scaled back security efforts and the level of violence had reduced. This is one indication that an increased US security presence would cause more violence. Even though there has been a rise in extortion since the homicide rate fell, the drop is an improvement (1). The US has also made considerable attempts to help finance bilateral efforts through the Merida Initiative. The Merida Initiative has made the training and improvement of the Mexican police and federal forces a priority (5) and has been semi successful in doing so. Pena Nieto has also attempted to grow and improve the Mexican security forces, trying to streamline their organization and redirect all official US business through the Foreign ministry (8). The US cannot do much more than they already are doing, besides continuing to give the Mexicans money and intelligence support to help them in this respect. An increase in American involvement may not be the best thing for a reorganizing Mexico, maintaining the current amount of support is probably the ideal, as the Merida Initiative was designed to help the Mexicans deal with the problem as they saw fit; the US was supposed to follow the lead of the Mexican government (5). Since increasing US military involvement would likely destabilize the situation as they did in 2006, when increased efforts led to 120,000 deaths a year to date (half of which were directly linked to gang activity), this is probably not the best solution, and considering the US is already helping Mexico financially there is no big reason for an increase (or putting in "way more effort") in support this way. The US would be best to shore up the US-Mexico border. Currently the US is the leading supplier in Mexican weapons, and weak border security allows guns to flow pretty freely into Mexico. Approximately 250,000 guns cross the border illegally (purchased legally in America and are illegally smuggled) annually, investing in reducing this number would do more to reduce violence than more intervention militarily (3). The current estimate for contraband weapons confiscated at the border is 14% (4). Attempts to further reduce the amount of drugs coming across the border couldn't hurt either. Decriminalization of marijuana in the US may also cut down on the wealth of the cartels, as weed is their one of their two main exports, and Uruguay and somewhere else in South America legalized and saw no increase in drug use (7/8). Anyway that"s all got. I"ll make a stronger case if my opponent comes back, I was kind of lazy with this one. 1 http://www.cfr.org... 2 http://www.theguardian.com... 3 http://fpc.state.gov... 4 http://catcher.sandiego.edu... 5 http://www.wilsoncenter.org... 6 http://seattletimes.com... 7 https://www.ncjrs.gov... 8 http://www.csmonitor.com...(page)/2