I must confess--I am waking up slowly to all of this, although I knew several years ago that our Pacific Northwest labor market would shortly be impacted by a tide of migrant, illegal workers. An INS bust back in 1999 rounded up a then large number of construction workers in Seattle. After 9/11 INS/ICE workplace busts fell way off.

Back to the Drug war. According to this article Mexican drug cartels are also deriving some powerful, military weapons from US sources. It does seem to give the credit to Calderon for stepping up enforcement, way over what Vicente Fox did. So who's at fault?:
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/vi ... 3b249c140f

The demand for many of the drugs involvd in this struggle had begun decades ago as a generation tuned in, turned on and dropped out. Meth is just the latest major trend and it seems that American demand stimulated Mexican drug lords and labs to supply it. Now it's a vicious cycle. Throughout America there are communities of 'tweakers' surviving God knows how, possibly through a lot of crime and fraud.