This is one reason why the war was lost - the Allies could not buck the market. It is here that the fight goes on to stop heroin and cocaine entering America. This has been the front line in the world's drugs war, and if anti-drug forces were to have any chance of success, this was a battle they had to win. Yet reports from the front have been remarkably few - for the simple reason that the US administration has been too embarrassed to admit what has been happening. In truth, the border between Mexico and the United States has, to all intents, disappeared.
Drugs pour across it day and night.
Cartels that span Mexico, Bolivia, Colombia and Peru have corrupted American customs officials. They have Americans on their payroll, sometimes former members of American special forces, who know how to tap telephones, do code encryptions, and who have the communications skills to put them on the level of a nation state. This is where much of the cocaine and heroin from Latin America enters the United States. It would be a difficult area to police at any time. A customs officer on duty at one lane will suddenly find himself switched to another, so as to prevent any prior arrangement with the driver of a truck carrying drugs.