Mexican drug traffickers are now entrenched in at least 270 American cities, running sophisticated and disciplined networks that not only bring the drugs in, but also ship truckloads of cash back to Mexico, reports NBC News. “Mexico and its government are looking as transnational drug trafficking as a national security threat. We, too, have to look at it seriously in our country,” said David Gaddis, chief for global enforcement operations at the Drug Enforcement Administration. “It is our country’s number one organized crime threat.”
“I think they make al-Qaida look tame in terms of what they do. I can’t explain how someone loses their humanity and resorts to these things,” said Anthony Coulson, a recently retired DEA supervisor. Coulson ran the DEA’s Tucson office, overseeing 255 miles of border between the U.S. and Mexico. He argued that the violence, and the amounts of illicit drugs flowing from Mexico into the U.S., never has been higher and that the traffickers have never been more powerful or in control of more territory than they are now.