In Guatemala, the drug war looks even worse. The Guatemalan national budget for public security is $420 million and its military budget is $160 million. The value of the narcotics smuggled through Guatemala each year is in the range of $40 to 50 billion -- about equal to the national GDP -- and that does not include the money made from smuggling weapons, people, and other contraband. In just three years, it appears that the Sinaloa and the Zetas Mexican cartels have come to control as much as 40 percent of the country's territory. They grow poppy, process cocaine and methamphetamines, and run training camps for their new recruits, who include members of Guatemala's elite special forces unit.

Guatemala and other Central American states are understandable worried their drug wars will come to resemble Mexico's, but with far fewer national resources to support the fight, much weaker police and military forces, and far less help from the United States. In 2011, the U.S. gave $180 million to Mexico for military and police assistance, but only $16 million to Guatemala and around $6 million each to Honduras and El Salvador.

So, naturally, the option of legalizing the drug trade, and thus avoiding a further drug war, sounds appealing. Though the Guatemalan government hasn't presented any specific idea or plan, the conventional interpretation would be to legalize personal drug consumption as well as small batch sales and to tax them; to focus on drug use prevention and treatment, instead of criminalizing addicts; and then to focus security efforts against organized crime and violence, instead of constantly watching for, chasing, and interdicting drug shipments.

Supporters of drug legalization argue that it would do three things for Central America. First, it would create new tax revenues for countries that badly need them. Taxes on drugs could go to these countries' under-resourced police forces and their prosecutorial, judicial, and penal systems. The U.S. State Department argues that legalizing drugs would do nothing to reduce organized criminal activity in money laundering, extortion, kidnapping, counterfeit goods, etc., but this overlooks the key issue of resources. Drug legalization would, if done right, mean more resources for the state to put toward anti-organized crime operations.

The second benefit, according to advocates, would be to reduce the value of drugs and therefore the resources of organized criminal groups, making them easier to fight. The third would be to reduce the violence associated with gangs and cartels fighting over the routes where they operate. Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras today suffer from the world's highest homicide rates. The reduction of violent crime should be these governments' top immediate objective.

Unfortunately, in Central America, legalization alone is not likely to achieve any of these things.