I'll just add that the cartels are so unimaginably brutal, not bound by even the slightest pretense of laws of warfare, that it is impossible that anyone resist to bowing to their demands.
I'm talking "refuse to be bribed and we will skin your teenage son alive in front of you and send the video to his mother".
That is a comforting thought, but the “tough / law and order / war on drugs” response has already been tried extensively under president Calderón, and the result was an explosion in violence and killings, without overall reducing the power of cartels.
The source of the power of the cartels lies north of the border. It's not possible to fight them only in Mexico without tackling their funding sources.
Afaik it is working with marijuana, because we now support domestic production. If we want to cut off the supply chain, we would need to produce domestically the other drugs in the cartel's supply chains.
The US doesn't have the maturity to produce cocaine and distribute internally w/o becoming another cartel. The CIA already did this as a funding source, I could see it being done to destabilize cash flow for cartels. Simply legalizing the possession will allow the focus to be spent elsewhere but will not stem the tide.
>The US doesn't have the maturity to produce cocaine and distribute internally w/o becoming another cartel.
It already does.
Stepan, a chemical company in New Jersey, is the only company in the US licensed to import coca leaf, which primarily comes from a Peruvian state-owned company. The cocaine is extracted and sold to Mallinckrodt for pharmaceutical use (it's used in ENT surgery, as it's both a local anaesthetic and a vasoconstrictor), whilst the remnants are sold to the Coca-Cola Company for use as flavourings.
The process to get cocaine from coca leaf is the same as to extract any alkaloid from a plant.
The problem is the supply is not controlled in the USA, is dependent on the government of Peru and the drug manufacturing cartels have tons and tons of land in Colombia just for growing cocaine. It grows naturally.
Competition is good. The goal of legalising is not to make money, but to suck the profitability out of the industry. Especially the illegal part of the industry.
The cocaine, meth, and opium trade is more than enough to maintain the current situation.
Marijuana confiscation at ports is down 80% over the last decade, but under the current administration (Mexican), violence has exploded to levels triple that of the peak of the previous drug war when CDS/Zetas/CDT/CDG were engaged in multiple wars over lucrative plazas.
One of my junior Marines has family in Mexico. He was almost kidnapped there when he was 17. He also told me a story of his Aunt's friend, who had a restaurant in central Mexico. One day she was complaining about the cartel to a customer, a middle-aged man. The man said "Hey aren't you having a banquet next Saturday? I'll provide the meat. Don't worry, consider it a gift."
The next Saturday a black trashbag was deposited on her doorstep.....with the chopped up body of her son inside it, and a message to "be careful who you speak bad about".
It's terrifying to think of how people try to navigate such savagery just trying to go about their lives.
They are uploading videos of dismembering innocent female family members because the competing factions are trying to outdo each-other in brutality to take the upper hand.
I'm talking "refuse to be bribed and we will skin your teenage son alive in front of you and send the video to his mother".