Nearly 30,000 people have been brutally murdered since Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared war on the drug cartels in 2007. This number is greater than the loss of military life in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
So far President Calderon has deployed more than 45,000 troops and 5,000 federal police officers to Mexico’s 18 states where the drug cartels are known to operate. The thrust of the cartel violence often pits low-income peasants against one another in order to give drug lords access to the best smuggling routes into America.
Many leaders in Mexico accuse the U.S. of doing nothing to stop America’s growing drug addiction and experts have pointed to the fact that 80 percent of the world’s drug consumption is inside the land of the free and home of the brave.