So much for the whole “drug war” narrative, the Cartel warlord’s insurgency is about more than selling pot. They literally control whether or not Mexico can send civil servants in areas. Will legalizing pot make them give up this kind of power?

With killings and disappearances to assert their authority, Mexico’s drug cartels are beginning to interfere with everyday government activities in pockets of the country, keeping workers off their turf and interrupting some of the most basic services.

Not only do they maintain checkpoints and kill police or mayors to control territory, they now try to keep everyone from midlevel officials to delivery truck drivers and meter readers out of rural areas they use to transport drugs, stash weapons and kidnap victims, and hide from authorities. In the process, they are blocking deliveries of gasoline, pension checks, farm aid and other services to Mexicans.

Cartels also rob or extort people receiving government checks, as organized crime branches out from drug running into other illegal businesses.

These interruptions have even affected the U.S., as agricultural inspections at the border have slowed. The recent search for the body of a missing American tourist on a border lake was suspended under threats of drug-cartel violence and the assassination of the police commander in charge of the search.

“Everything’s stopped,” said Maria Luz Hopkins, a 69-year-old retiree in Tubutama, south of the Arizona border city of Nogales. “There’s no construction. Nobody is working the fields because they don’t have gasoline or diesel. The people that used to bring gasoline, they don’t come. How can people work?”

Hopkins complained to officials in the Sonora state capitol, Hermosillo, when the government stopped delivering pension checks. She said they came last month in a convoy of about 20 heavily armed trucks after missing a bimonthly payment over the summer.

That the cartel can effect America without coming in our territory should worry everyone. This is the new reality, non-state warlords can challenge two different countries with impunity