Mexico’s drug war is fueled by American guns, money and drug consumption. That’s another war we need to end.

Mexico’s war against the drug cartels, which has been raging for two years, has finally started to worry people on our side of the border.
According to the U.S. National Drug Center, Mexican drug trafficking organizations now represent the greatest organized crime threat to the United States. The cartels operate in 230 cities around the country and are steadily expanding their reach.
A few days ago, U.S. authorities arrested 52 members of the Sinaloa cartel in California, Maryland and Minnesota. In announcing the arrests, Attorney General Eric Holder admitted that the cartels have become a national security threat.
Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff indicated last month that his department had drawn up contingency plans to deploy the military along the border if, he said, civilian agencies are overwhelmed by cross-border violence. And, Texas Governor Rick Perry’s spokeswoman said his state is drawing up its own contingency plans, including how to cope with the possibility of a massive influx of Mexican refugees fleeing the drug war.
How big is massive? A foreign policy expert from Washington’s Cato Institute speculated on Fox News that maybe a million Mexicans might seek asylum in the U.S. if things get bad enough.
While that sounds like typical Fox News hysteria, the bodies are piling up in Mexico. The Mexican media reports that there have been 1,000 drug-related deaths since January 1st—mostly gang members, police and soldiers. That’s after almost 6,000 last year.
As FLYP documented last summer, the drug cartels are armed with guns bought at U.S. gun shows—everything from assault weapons and hand grenades to armor-piercing sniper rifles and rocket launchers.
Those weapons are paid for with the money that Americans spend on illegal drugs. The Mexicans alone earn an estimated at 20 to 40 billion dollars annually from our national drug habit.
And, every year, as much as $12 billion in bulk cash is stuffed into cars, trucks and containers—along with the weapons—and shipped south. It all passes right by U.S. border officials, day after day.
As one of those officials told FLYP, “what goes into Mexico is their problem.”
That’s certainly not true anymore, if it ever was. We urgently need to help Mexico win its war, which is our war as well.
That means President Barack Obama needs to do two things immediately:

• The first is to re-establish a ban on the ownership of assault weapons, which President Bush had ended.
• The second is to demand that Janet Napolitano, who is now Homeland Security secretary, pay as much attention to the illegal cash and guns flowing out of the country as to the contraband and illegal aliens coming in.

But there is another thing he should do: start a national conversation about drug legalization. Until that happens, this war cannot be won.