Mexico faces a life-and-death battle between the government, including the army and police, and the country's drug lords for control.

If the government loses, Mexico becomes definitively a drug state. In the meantime, the death toll is rising, including among the top leadership of the federal police force. Some of what is taking place looks like bad television, but it isn't. It's the reality of Mexico today.

It is not correct to say that what is going on is the fault of the United States. Mexico's authorities themselves, led by President Felipe Calderon, must accept their responsibilities. If they had done so earlier, perhaps the situation would not have arr- ived at such a dire juncture now.

At the same time, neither Americans nor Mexicans can be blind to the fact that the existence of a $400 billion drug market lying just to the north of Mexico, a relatively poor country with shaky law enforcement and judicial structures, plays a large part in putting the country in this dilemma.

There is certainly no reason to believe that building fences or lining America's southwest border with police will be any more effective in dealing with the cross-border drug trade than it is with illegal immigration. This is another instance in which economics trumps politics.

In neither this election year nor any other year in the foreseeable future can Americans expect the White House or the Congress to grasp the sharp nettle of a new, effective policy on illegal drugs. But the illegal activity that the current approach encourages, whether it be in the United States or Mexico, needs to be seriously examined. In Mexico the top federal police chief is gunned down; in Pittsburgh children are slaughtered by drug dealers' crossfire.

Is it possible that this subject can be high on the agenda of the new administration and Congress that will arrive in January? It needs to be, not only for the sake of the U.S. population, but also to save its neighbors to the south from drifting rapidly toward a state of corrupt and violent chaos.