Amen.

The fight in Mexico is not over legality. It's over who gets the money. They have the most corrupt government on Earth, with high level government officials being paid to both look the other way, and to crack down on the "other" cartels. They only go after a given cartel for one reason - another one is paying them to do so. Oh, they would like to keep up appearances for the U.S., but that only goes so far. The real motivation for "enforcement" is simply because one cartel is paying them to lean on another.

Government officials get killed damn near every day down there. Not because they are good, honest folks doing their best to stem drug trafficking, but because they crossed a cartel with whom they had a deal. Greedy government officials double dip, looking for payoffs from more than one cartel. When the cartels find out, when an official plays one against the other, he simply gets killed. It's really just that simple.

It's in no one's interest to really "fight" drug trafficking down there. They are all in on it at one level or another. The government itself is probably the biggest criminal enterprise involved in that trade. Most of the violence is a direct result of their involvement and, again, not because they are trying to stop it. It's because they are trying to maximize their profits from it.