Well, in the fullness of time, the drug abuse problem here remains tolerable for our society if not ideal, while Mexico has learned that the drug cartels are not just an import-export business that helps their bottom line (via Stratfor):
In 2010, the cartel wars in Mexico have produced unprecedented levels of violence throughout the country. No longer concentrated in just a few states, the violence has spread all across the northern tier of border states and along much of both the east and west coasts of Mexico. This year’s drug-related homicides have surpassed 11,000, an increase of more than 4,400 deaths from 2009 and more than double the death toll in 2008.
Read the rest. Mexico is at war and in the cross hairs of inter-cartel war. And if Mexico decides to solve the problem of escalating violence by making sure a few cartels control the drug trade and stop their inter-cartel wars and observe a ceasefire with the government, the Mexicans will be treating a symptom and not the disease. For a while, it will seem like the good old days with acceptable violence and Yankee money flowing south into Mexico.
But some years down the road, these "tamed" bigger cartels will become powerful enough to take over the Mexican government, by either direct force or boring in to take it over from the inside based on their drug money buying influence and actual government officials--and putting their own people right into the government, ultimately.
Surely, the border violence is a problem for us. And the effects of a failed state south of our border would be a major problem for us. But the major impact of the violence falls on Mexico's people; and the effects of a state collapse or takeover would be on the Mexican government officials and the Mexican people. (And our current national debate over Arizona's illegal immigrant laws will seem idiotic, and the actual law quaintly naive in its lack of scope, given the problem.)
This would be called "blowback."
