Drug cartels are luring an alarming number of Mexico’s youth into a lifestyle of fast money, drugs and crime, the Washington Post reported Nov. 3. 

Drug traffickers are ramping up their recruitment of Mexico’s youth to replace the tens of thousands of members killed or arrested during President Felipe Calderòn’s war on drugs that the U.S. is backing, officials said.  

Mexico’s “lost generation” includes some cartel members as young as age 12. 

“The cartels recruit by first involving them in some drug trafficking, then in selling drugs and finally, in some cases for as little as $160 a week, they are given the job of tracking down people the cartel wants to assassinate,” said Victor Valencia, the secretary of public security in the state of Chihuahua, which includes the most dangerous city in Mexico, Ciudad Juarez.

More than 100 youth have been killed in Ciudad Juarez in drug-related incidents during the past year, according to the city’s paper, El Diario.

Hundreds of youth, including American citizens, have been arrested in 2009 for smuggling drugs between Mexico and the U.S.

“Young people sell drugs and weapons because they want to make the easy money,” said a 17-year-old serving time in a Mexican detention facility for selling guns.  He said people cannot make a living working at the border manufacturing plants, called “maquiladoras.” A life of crime is “almost irresistible” for him and his peers, he said.