Mexico Makes Major Drug Bust

Mexican authorities succeeded with its biggest drug bust. Soldiers raided houses in Tijuana, confiscating marijuana worth millions of dollars.

The Mexican military raided a group of homes in a poor suburb in the border city of Tijuana on Monday.

They seized 105 tons of marijuana with a street value of at least 340 million U.S. dollars.

[General Alfonso Duarte, Commander of Tijuana Army Zone]:
"We obtained the following results: In Tijuana, Baja California, more than 10 thousand marijuana packages weighing 105 tons, six trailers, three heavy vehicles, two pick-ups and two large weapons were seized and eleven people were detained."

Soldiers came under fire at least once as they confiscated the drugs and arrested the suspects.

The marijuana was carefully wrapped, labeled, and ready for distribution in the United States, according to the army.

The bust is a boost for Mexican President Felipe Calderon, whose reputation is staked on his campaign against his country's powerful drug cartels.

The death toll from Calderon's war on drugs has climbed to nearly 30 thousand over the past four years.

This puts him under increasing pressure to show results, both at home where alarm is growing among citizens and abroad as Washington and foreign investors are on edge.

Over the past decade, Mexican cartels have grown extremely powerful as violence sparked by cartel rivalries has spread beyond the long-troubled cities into formerly peaceful places.

Mexico is one of the world's top marijuana producers, exporting about seven thousand tons a year.

Together with home-grown heroin they generate an estimated $10 billion in exports.