 During this time, drug cartels expanded their power and corruption, and anti-drug operations focused mainly on destroying marijuana and opium crops in mountainous regions.There were no large-scale high-profile military operations against their core structures in urban areas until the 2000 Mexican election, when the right-wing PAN party gained the presidency and started a crackdown on cartels in their own turf.In the year 2000 Vicente Fox, from the right-wing PAN party, became the first Mexican president not to be from the PRI party (that ruled Mexico for 70 years); his presidency passed with relative peace, having a crime index not too different from that of previous administrations, and Mexican public opinion was mainly optimistic with the regime change, with Mexico even showing a general decline in homicide rates from 2000 to 2007.