today opinion and obama administration's remain committed to the merida initiative goes. are going to get significant investment into the bill is of both countries continue to build mexico's capacity to fight narcotics trafficking, organized crime and violence. together, we are aggressively responding to this threat by putting the lives of drug trafficking organizations in jail by seizing the drugs and money and by dismantling their organizations. today -- professionalizing anthony because of mexican law enforcement agencies, supporting the mexican government's efforts to strengthen border management and security and helping advance reform across mexico's justice sector. bilaterally we've agreed targeting the production and trafficking of heroin as well as fentanyl and other dangerous synthetic substances is a top shared priority. to that end we are providing training to law enforcement officers, investigators and analysts increasing the visibility to identify, investigate and dismantle and justin heroin and fentanyl left the weather interagency partners are also improvin

that's taking the four things that we described as our mÉrida initiatives and giving them a report cardlities are changing, we are dealing more with transnational organized crime. when we started mÉrida we were focused largely on cocaine and lesser heroin. the government left office in 2012 and now the not-so new government has determined their own priorities. we have to continue to work that. at tend of the day, my assessment is we are substantially better in our bilateral relationship with mÉxico today than we were at the start of the mÉrida initiative, and that in and of itself gives good value to the united states of america. >> one of the concerns i picked up particularly when it comes to drug trafficking issues was concern from some that decriminalization efforts of marijuana in the united states was hurting our efforts to stop traffic out of mÉxico. can you talk about that? >> yeah, i will do it carefully. i am aware of who i am speak to go right now. i will say that it is impossible for me to go to mÉxico and talk to the mexican government without hearing from virtually every on