This wasn’t all that unusual-most of the investigative journalists in Mexico work under intense circumstances given that they often come into information relating to the drug cartels that they either can not, or will not, report on because it would be a death sentence for them, so they give the information to someone like me who will get it aired or published in way that does not connect them.

I arrived early to the restaurant and since the weather was so pleasant, I decided to take a seat on the patio and have a glass of tea. I sat there for a few minutes when my source arrived and sat down, ordered a drink and handed me a large white envelope. He told me this was everything I had been asking his editor about the day before and that I should be careful how I use them. I thanked him, (by paying him) and we talked for about twenty more minutes and he asked if I could give him a ride home.

He got into my rent car and told me to drive towards his house on the outskirts of town-as we drove past the airport and headed towards Monterrey, and just as I was about to make the turn off the highway to drop him near his home, we saw three sets of headlights about two hundred yards off the main road in a desolate section of land.

I stopped the car and told him I wanted to see what was going on. Without objection from my friend I drove within a few yards of what appeared to be about a half dozen local cops attempting to seal off a crime scene. We exited our vehicle and walked towards the area where the police cars were shining their lights and as I looked down I was standing over three bodies that, appeared to be young boys judging by their clothes, and who were obviously dead. I stepped over to the side a few steps and there were three more lying in the bushes. As the police started talking to my reporter friend I leaned over the first three bodies and even though I’m no forensic expert, I could clearly see they had all been shot execution style in the back of the head. My friend confirmed the other three had the same type wounds.

Within a few hours we were able to piece together some of the basic common threads between these young corpses. They were all teenage boys-the oldest was seventeen, the youngest was thirteen. They had all been working for one of the cartels as couriers and pocketed the money after crossing about a hundred pounds of marijuana (about $2000 worth) into the United States. They had they had been caught by their handlers (the men in charge of supervising the young gang members) and since the cartel uses hundreds of kids just like these all over Mexico and the U.S., someone made the decision to make examples of these kids. A message needed to be sent out so the rest of the young recruits would realize the severity of side dealing and not following orders.

Six .40 caliber bullets to the heads of these boys sent out a very powerful message.

It was a gruesome sight and it made me realize for the first time, that these kids probably never fully understood the “consequences” of getting involved with the cartel and dealing a little harmless weed.

For years I’ve heard people from all over the country, many of them celebrities, politicians and businessmen make the argument that pot is harmless and that it is “just pot” – it’s not like hard drugs and doesn’t carry the same “consequences” as cocaine and heroin.

Let me just respond like this. To the men that manufacture, transport and sell these narcotics, they are all the same thing-money, and no matter what the substance is, it is intended to be converted into money and that is entirely what this is all about for them. This is just but one example of how they will kill a thirteen year old over a load of pot just as fast as they will kill a thirty year old over a load of cocaine, heroin, or meth.

The discussion about the legalization or decriminalization of certain narcotics is starting to pick up traction in our country today and I for one, embrace that discussion. That doesn’t mean I embrace the legalization, but I definitely think its time to have a detailed, mature discussion on the matter. But the discussion is meaningless unless we deal with the truth and the truth is, the illicit narcotics trade is not only more profitable than ever before in the history of smuggling, but more deadly than before too.

The drug policy in America has become almost schizophrenic especially as it relates to marijuana. No doubt we have to have some type comprehensive reform as it relates to the way we are prosecuting the “war on drugs” (dare I even say “war on drugs?”) because what we have been doing has not worked very well by any standard. Maybe legalization is part of that solution, but this problem is far more complex than any ONE solution. Just like the fence that was built to secure our border and hasn’t. What the fence did succeed in doing is curbing one problem in certain areas, but creating more problems in other areas.

Neither will the legalization of narcotics fix everything wrong with the drug war. It will curb some things, but be advised it will also create new problems in areas we are not prepared for today, causing a whole new set of consequences. Unlike those teenage boys lying in the desert-we should take the time to understand and fully comprehend those consequences before we endeavor to take that next step.

On a hot summer evening, in a bar in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico just across the bridge from Laredo, Texas; a thirty year-old man, on his knees, surrounded by a dozen armed guards, can be heard begging for his life, he cries for one more chance to make it right with the boss, one more chance to see his family—one more chance at life.

His boss happens to be the man who dictates the life and death of every soul in the Laredo corridor, listens to the pleas but has already made up his mind. He stands as judge and jury in this court and it’s clear, he’s heard enough. So he pulls a diamond studded, pearl handled pistol from his belt and slowly hands it over to one of his newest recruits. He tells the recruit to put a bullet in the condemned mans head as he sobs uncontrollably—and so, without hesitation the young man pulls the trigger four times over.

This was the new recruit’s first kill and his first real test for initiation to become an assassin of the Gulf Cartel’s enforcement arm known as the Zetas. He had never killed anyone before that night and when his cartel boss handed him the pistol and he pulled that trigger— he knew he loved it. He told me later that it gave him a rush that he had never felt before, “to kill a man and know I was going to get a way with it gave me a feeling of power” —He spoke of that night as if he had found his true calling—“I knew right then I was born to be a sicario” (Spanish for “hit-man”) He was thirteen years old.

I’ve met and talked with numerous players in the drug war being waged on our border and beyond, that have often left me feeling more than a little disturbed. The utter disregard for human life that’s evidenced in the daily tortures and executions taking place down here, certainly wears on the most seasoned of us reporting on it. But when I looked into the eyes of this young man and saw how he lit up inside while speaking so nonchalantly yet eloquently about how he “lived to kill” ever since he pulled that trigger for the first time, it sent cold chills down my spine—and still does. “I’ve killed men while they were tied and bound but that there is no thrill, no excitement in that for me. I prefer to stalk my target, hunt them down and then, after I know his moves front to back, I sneak up on them, look’em in the eyes and pull the trigger—now that’s a rush.”

I interviewed him a year before the mainstream media ever heard his name, Rosalio Reta, was born and raised in Laredo, Texas and recruited by the Zetas when he was barely in the 7th grade.

The first time I met Reta he was barely 18 years old and awaiting his first murder trial in Webb County. We had to meet in private because to be seen talking with someone like me, would have been a death sentence for someone like him. Sheriff Rick Flores, one of the courageous men I ever known, had him moved into his personal office so I could meet with the most infamous prisoner in his jail at the time. Even though Reta was in leg irons and shackles he had an arrogant look about him, wearing a smirk on his face that made you think he thought all of this was funny.

If you don’t count the lightening bolts tattooed on his face, he looks like any ordinary kid until he opens his mouth to speak. Calculating and conniving, I’d call him street smart for sure. He ended up asking me as many questions that first day as I did him.

He took notes as we talked, he asked me all kinds of personal questions, in fact the more personal I got with my questions he did the same. At first I didn’t know what to think about this quid pro quo interview, but after a while I realized he was trying to intimidate me or back me off more than anything else. Knowing what I already knew about this kid, it almost worked.

He told me that he frequently went to Nuevo Laredo looking to work as a drug runner or whatever he could to make the kind of money that type of work pays. This part of his story is played out everyday all along the border, and recruitment of young teenagers into drug gangs is nothing new either, but giving them para-military training and state of the art weaponry is. Reta is part of a new wave of young recruits that are giving the drug cartels a bumper crop of highly trained and highly motivated soldiers and giving us our worst nightmare—domestic narco-terrorists.

Training for these kids starts as soon as they are deemed by their elder Zeta commander as being ready, usually after they have proven their ability to kill someone. Once that right of passage has been taken then the real training can begin.

The core group of men commanding los Zetas, were trained and outfitted here in the United States at the School of the Americas in the 1990’s. Trained to handle all types sophisticated weaponry: automatic assault rifles, heavy-caliber machine guns, bombs, and grenade launchers. They are experts in explosives, GPS technology, wiretapping, and counterintelligence. And even though many of the founding members have been captured or killed in the last few years—they have managed to duplicate themselves many times over with this new generation of better Zetas.

My interview with Reta and numerous other sources revealed that the Zetas have training camps all over northern Mexico, central America and have even been known to use property on the U.S. side of the border to conduct training.

And what exactly are they training these boys and girls to do? It starts out as any other military boot camp with physical training, running and obstacle course drills and then classes later in the day.

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for six months; the same training that is given to the most elite special-forces anywhere is given to these teenagers, all in the consorted effort to build a generation of narco-terrorists better than their predecessors. They are indoctrinated to the ways of the Zetas. “Leave no man behind” is one of those creeds a Zetita is taught to live by, Reta told me “if you go out with ten other men and they get killed, you come home with ten corpses or not at all.” At a time in his life when Reta should have been learning geometry, basic biology and how to muster up the courage to ask a girl out on a date—he was learning how to calculate wind and distance to take out a target and the best ways to torture a man to extract information.

The ones signing up to be assassins aren’t just taught to kill with weapons, but they are given martial arts training and taught first how to kill with their hands. They are taught how to run the most sophisticated surveillance and weaponry available today. They are taught how to dis-assemble and re-assemble every weapon they are issued, and then they learn how to use it with deadly precision; they handle all forms of handguns, AK-47’s, AR-15’s, .50 caliber machine guns, fragment grenades and rocket launchers. They are taught how to properly form a sniper team and take out a target from distances of a thousand yards or more. To hone their urban assault training to a higher level, they encourage the teams here in the U.S., to enter into paintball tournaments and report their scores.

They have an extensive course in SERE, the acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. They are taught how to dispense torture to obtain information and how to take being tortured, in case they are ever captured. They are taught how to drive their vehicles in high speed chases and how to box in their intended targets at intersection as to create the best possible kill zone and at the same time limit the potential for collateral damage and injury to innocent bystanders.

As you would probably guess many of these kids “washout” of the program and for those recruits that can’t cut the rigors of para-military training, the option is given to go into a complete smuggling training program or sign up for an advanced school in electronics and even college.

Operating in the States is a necessity for every drug trafficking organization including the Zetas. These American recruits serve as great benefit to the DTO’s because these kids don’t stand out, they blend right into our society. They speak perfect English, they dress like every other teenager, they know the roads and they know the customs. They can guard a million dollar load of narcotics from Laredo to Dallas and pass right through a border checkpoint and never look suspicious. When the narcotics reach their destination they act as the cartel bankers, collect the money, and drive that cash back safely to Mexico and never miss a day of school to do it.

I just recently spoke at a law enforcement conference of gang investigators and the question that’s being asked by the law enforcement community, “How does a police force seeking to act within the law and respect human rights successfully combat an enemy, made up of teenagers armed with heavy weapons, all of whom will kill a police officer without thought and who, if arrested, can only be held in custody for a few hours?