Legalization with heavy regulation honestly seems like the best way forward at this point, to combat both the politico-economic (drug cartels) and health (addic

Legalization with heavy regulation honestly seems like the best way forward at this point, to combat both the politico-economic (drug cartels) and health (addiction treatment) consequences of drugs that will always exist whether legal or not. From the perspective of someone who is from Mexico, I can attest that at least the general consensus is that the cartels derive the majority of their power from their interactions with the US market: most of their money from selling drugs north of the border, most of their strength from buying weapons from US sellers. They have some more local sources of income (extortion, protection rackets, kidnapping, theft) but in cash terms all of those pale compared with the drug business. As for weapons? They definitely don't have any local manufacturing capabilities and I doubt they have any suppliers not from the U.S. at the moment. At this point, legalization won't be the full solution for the problems with the Mexican cartels, but it's probably the single best thing that can be done to combat the issue. More effective than armed intervention, faster and more reliable than any current attempts to boost the Mexican rural economy (lack of jobs and very low earnings from normal crops is part of what allows drug cartels to recruit enforcers easily and convince farmers to grow pot instead of wheat) and definitely easier to implement than any anti-corruption measure targeting the Mexican institutions (which have corruption as a very endemic historical problem and rooted in ways that most anglo-saxon countries cannot fully imagine). Edit: That said, this is an interesting counterpoint: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/31/opinion/global/mexicos-deadly-power-vacuum.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/31/opinion/global/mexicos-dea... by a very respected subject expert (Dr. Buscaglia), arguing that larger and wealthier criminal organizations than the Mexican cartels exist in other countries, and that the main reason for the cartel-related violence in Mexico and not say in Russia, China or the U.S. is the relative weakness of the state and the job-generating economy.