MEXICO CITY - Mexico, a country carved up by cartels for decades, is poised to take a major step in drug policy. This week, the lower house of Congress approved a landmark bill to legalize recreational marijuana, which would make it the world's largest legal market for the drug.

With legalization considered all but certain to win Senate and presidential approval, many in the business world are predicting a Mexican green boom: a newly legal industry providing tens of thousands of jobs, millions of dollars in profit for savvy entrepreneurs and welcome tax revenue for the government.

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CULIACAN, Mexico - Like a lot of businesses, the Sinaloa Cartel was knocked back on its heels as the coronavirus swept the globe and travel ground to a near halt.

Government measures to contain the virus had fouled up its operations, interrupting the supply of chemicals for manufacturing synthetic drugs like fentanyl and methamphetamine and cutting off trafficking routes across international borders.

But the cartel is not just any business. It established itself as one of the world's most powerful drug trafficking groups with a trademark mix of business acumen, ingenuity and lawlessness.

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MEXICO CITY - Tiger cubs and semiautomatic weapons. Piles of cash and armored cars. Fields of poppies watered to the sound of ballads glorifying Mexican drug cartel culture.

This is the world of Cartel TikTok, a genre of videos depicting drug trafficking groups and their activities that is racking up hundreds of thousands of views on the popular social media platform.

But behind the narco bling and dancing gang members lies an ominous reality: With Mexico set to again shatter murder records this year, experts on organized crime say Cartel TikTok is just the latest propaganda campaign designed to mask the blood bath and use the promise of infinite wealth to attract expendable young recruits.

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MEXICO CITY - On June 17, 1971, President Richard Nixon stood in front of the White House press corps and made his historic declaration of a new type of war. "Public Enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse," he said. "In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it's necessary to wage a new all-out offensive."

It would be a government-wide effort, and rally the United States's power abroad to stem the supply of drugs. Among the countries targeted was Mexico, which was home to abundant marijuana production and had been resistant to aerial crop spraying.

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SAN MIGUEL AMOLTEPEC VIEJO, Mexico - For years, two young brothers, like many other farmers in their poor, mountainous region of southwest Mexico, found salvation in the opium poppy. They bled the milky latex from its pods and the profits made their hard lives a little easier.

The fact that this substance was the raw material for most of the heroin consumed in the United States was of little concern to the family, if they even knew it at all. But then changes in that distant market for illegal drugs made the price of the dried opium latex plummet.

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The soldiers took them in the night.

First they came for Nitza Alvarado Espinoza and Jose Alvarado Herrera. The 31-year-old cousins were sitting in a van outside a family member's house when troops forced them into a military truck.

Minutes later, soldiers arrived at the house of another Alvarado cousin, 18-year-old Rocio Alvarado Reyes. She was carried away screaming at gunpoint in front of her young brothers and baby daughter.

It was Dec. 29, 2009 -- the last time the cousins were seen alive.

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Juan Luis Lagunas Rosales was born in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, a mecca for cartels and the land of notorious drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Lagunas grew up never knowing his father. His mother left him with his grandmother as a child.

Lagunas left his hometown at the age of 15 without finishing high school, moving to the nearby municipality of Culiacan and washing cars to make a living, he said in an interview in July. It was in this adopted town that he took on the nickname that would later become known across cyberspace: "El Pirata de Culiacan," or "The Pirate of Culiacan."

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Drug war bloodshed in Mexico has spiked to record levels, with more homicides recorded in June than in any month in at least two decades.

Prosecutors opened 2,234 homicide investigations last month, according to government statistics released Friday. That's an increase of 40% over June of last year and 80% over June of 2014.

Rising demand for heroin in the United States and a bloody power struggle inside one of Mexico's most powerful drug cartels have put the country on track to record more killings in 2017 than in any year since the government began releasing crime data in 1997.

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Mexican police guard a crime scene near the beach resort of Mazatlan, where 19 suspected drug cartel members died in clashes with police on July 1. On Wednesday, cartel violence claimed 26 more lives in neighboring Chihuahua state.

Mexican police guard a crime scene near the beach resort of Mazatlan, where 19 suspected drug cartel members died in clashes with police on July 1. On Wednesday, cartel violence claimed 26 more lives in neighboring Chihuahua state. (Mario Rivera Alvarado / Associated Press)

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