In the early morning hours of Feb. 22, Mexican Army special forces â acting on U.S. intelligence â waged a brutal gun battle at a luxury villa in the Sierra Madre mountains, killing the cartel boss known as El Mencho, leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
It was a historic victory in President s war against the narco-terrorists who have poisoned America for decades. Let us pray it is the first of many.
Six major dominate the flow of deadly drugs into the United States. The CJNG is the most savage. Its sales of fentanyl, methamphetamine and cocaine top $12 billion annually. Inside Mexico, it uses mass executions, torture and kidnappings to strike fear into both the population and law enforcement.
The Trump administration rightfully designated all six major Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, but they are more than that. They are among the most powerful criminal organizations the world has ever seen, and the single deadliest enemy in American history.
The cartels maintain cells in all 50 states, using them to control the importation and distribution of nearly all the fentanyl, methamphetamine, heroin and much of the cocaine entering our country. Since 1999, their poison has killed more than 1 million Americans. The opioid crisis alone has claimed nearly eight times as many American lives as every U.S. military conflict since World War II combined.
When I served as U.S. drug czar under President George H.W. Bush, I often heard the argument that the real problem was demand for drugs in America â that the cartels were merely meeting it.
The evidence tells a different story: oversupply of drugs directly contributes to demand.
In the opioid epidemic, overdose deaths are tightly correlated with surges in supply. Cartels flood the market with cheap, and press it into counterfeit pills that look like legitimate prescription medicine, hooking unsuspecting users. They also use sophisticated social media tactics to target teenagers and young adults. These are not passive suppliers but industrial-scale predators cultivating new generations of addicts.
The human and economic toll is staggering. The cartels have hollowed out American communities and fueled waves of crime in cities and small towns across the country. They have cost America hundreds of billions in healthcare and law enforcement expenses, to say nothing of lost productivity.
For years, politicians largely sat by and watched. It took Trump to name the cartels for what they are â a â and commit our military, diplomatic and intelligence resources to stopping them.
The death of El Mencho was a good start, but not more than that. This was immediately clear when cartel loyalists conducted a , burning vehicles to create roadblocks and killing at least 25 Mexican national guard members.
When a kingpin falls, there is no shortage of evil to take his place. Cartels survive decapitations unless we attack the broader structures supporting them, including the money, chemical inputs, weapons pipelines, logistics networks and that shield them from justice.
Trump said after the raid that Mexico must continue to “” on cartels and drugs. He is right, and America must do the same.
That requires being honest about what is at stake. This is not just a strategic fight but a moral one. The drugs from these cartels corrode our national spirit and attack the dignity of human life. They normalize lawlessness and target our most vulnerable, including our youth â our future.Â
The war against the cartels will require persistence and moral clarity to win outright. And win outright we must. We owe it to the more than 1 million Americans already lost, and the many more who hang in the balance.Â
