“DANGER—PUBLIC WARNING, TRAVEL NOT RECOMMENDED,” read signs welcoming travelers along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Phoenix, Arizona, and San Diego, California. The signs go on to warn that the area is an “active drug and human smuggling area,” and that “visitors may encounter armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed.”

The signs are notice showing that America has surrendered swathes of its territory to drug gangs.

“Mexican drug cartels literally do control parts of Arizona,” said Sheriff Paul Babeu, who serves along one of the main smuggling routes to Phoenix. “They literally have scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills, and they literally control movement. They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has.”

“This is going on here in Arizona,” he continued. “This is 70 to 80 miles from the border—30 miles from the fifth-largest city in the United States.”

America has simply lost control of miles of its borderland.

Babeu says the cartels have him outnumbered and outgunned. Arizona’s law enforcement organizations and its two senators, John McCain and Jon Kyl, requested 3,000 National Guard troops to help secure the state’s border. In May, U.S. President Barack Obama promised to send 1,200 to the U.S.-Mexico border. Later, his administration said it would build up to having 1,500 troops on the border.

Babeu said that this week, “a whopping 30” arrived.

President of the National Border Patrol Council (nbpc) T.J. Bonner said politicians were trying to give the impression that the situation is far better than reality. The nbpc represents the 17,500 frontline Border Patrol agents.

“The federal government’s lack of will to secure our borders is painfully evident when signs are posted well north of the border warning citizens that armed and dangerous criminals are roaming through those areas with impunity,” said Bonner. “Instead of taking the steps necessary to secure our borders, politicians are attempting to convince the public that our borders are more secure now than ever before.”

Spokesman of the Bureau of Land Management, the organization that put up the road signs, Dennis Godfrey, said the intentions in putting up the signs were misunderstood. “The intention of the signs was to make the public aware that there is potential illegal activity here. But it was interpreted in a different light, and that was not the intent at all.”

“I kind of liken it to if I were visiting a city I were not familiar with and asked a policeman if it were safe to go in a particular area,” Mr. Godfrey said. There should be “no sense that we have ceded the land,” he said.

Texan member of the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees, Ted Poe, disagrees. “These signs say to American citizens, the federal government has ceded this area to the drug cartels. Don’t come here; we can’t protect you,” he said.

America has lacked the will to win wars in the Middle East. Now it lacks the will even to defend its own border.

Last month the president signed a bill to give $600 million to protect America’s border. The money will fund 1,000 additional Border Patrol agents, 250 Customs and Border Protection officers and two unmanned aerial vehicles.

This will help, but it doesn’t get to the root of the problem. In 2006, President George W. Bush sent 6,000 National Guard troops to the border. However, they pulled out in 2008. Today, the area is still violent.

This is America’s fault. American drug addicts are paying the drug cartels’ foot soldiers. Their money is buying the sophisticated weaponry. They fund the kidnapping, extortion and human smuggling operations.

This is not just about a weak will in Washington. It is a weak-willed America. Drug users across the country are funding this huge national security risk.

To solve the problem, America has two options. Either commit so many troops to the area that they completely obliterate the drug cartels. Or stop the demand for illegal drugs. The first option is still only a temporary solution. As long as people want the drugs, there will be organizations smuggling them.

Over 28,000 people have died in Mexico’s drug war. In the last week, one city mayor was murdered in front of his 10-year-old daughter. Gangs detonated two improvised explosive devices in separate vehicles on August 27 in the city of Reynosa. The next day, three explosions injured 15 civilians in the same city. And another city mayor, this time the mayor of Hidalgo, Tamaulipas, was assassinated on August 29.

Murders are common. On August 24, Mexican marines found the bodies of 72 recently murdered people on a ranch a few miles south of the U.S. border.

This is the type of violence that is coming to the U.S. if the nation cannot secure its borders.

The drug cartels are so powerful that even the Mexican government is struggling to take them down.

Escalating drug wars on U.S. soil are not America’s only problem. Terrorist groups such as Hezbollah are known to work with drug cartels. Weapons of mass destruction could be smuggled through Central America and across the border without much difficulty.

Defending the country’s borders is one of the top responsibilities of any government. America’s failure to do so is not only dangerous, but will also be regarded as a sign of weakness around the world.

America’s drug cartel problem broadcasts that America is weak on an individual and national level. Weak Americans fund the drug cartels, and weak America fails to fight them.