As evidenced by the lack of worth arrests at the top.
That is a strong argument as it shows the collusion of just changing caps for the ones really controlling the black market from above. Our own governments.
That or they/we are incompetent as heel.
Regards
DL
Yeah, I guess if what you're saying is that there's collusion between government agencies and cartels then sure. I wouldn't go so far as to call them the same entity but they certainly don't devote as many resources to combating them as, say, Al Qaeda, despite the fact that drug cartels and the drugs they push certainly have killed more people.
And since drug control is a federal matters where most countries are not permitted to get the military involved in these fights... despite the military usually has equipment many times better than both police and SWAT. Including tanks drones and other high level equipment would allow the police to bust down even the strongest defensive walls.
As far as I understand it, major police agencies (which SWAT teams would be attached to) usually use military surplus equipment, so if they really needed them, yes they would have some of that fancy military equipment. The federal government also absolutely could deploy the military to combat "these fights" if they really wanted to, but that would amount to an invasion of the country the cartels are stationed in simply to fix a problem that country's government isn't capable of fixing themselves. That would be us playing World Police again, so that's not exactly a good solution either. I guess if forced to pick between chasing cartels and chasing our own tail in the Middle East I'd pick the one that actually has a chance to improve society both here and abroad.