[luckyno13]

While I agree with you, the illegal drug trade got these guys started and off the ground, I think at this point they would have other avenues to keep themselves in business. I hear the human trafficking business is quite lucrative and booming these days down their way.

[tormeh]

Well, you can't really be a small cartel. Even if the other businesses are profitable, a cartel needs a certain size to pay for constant expenses like bribes, armed forces etc. Politicians and the police don't give you a discount because you're small and people still need to be just as intimidated even though you're doing less shit.

Just removing one illegal activity might knock the sum value of dangerous, illegal activities below the threshold where cartels can work.

[eam]

Just to add some more. The legalization of pot hurts cartel's income. I read somewhere, that pot accounts for 60% of the cartel's profit in a multi-billion dollar industry! I mention this because of the recent trends in the US where states are beginning to legalize it. I'm sure they weren't too happy to hear that Oregon and Alaska legalize it as it only takes part of the profit away. Once the US is fully legalized, it won't be a hugely profitable business anymore so they will hurt. This means less profits, which means less power for them. With less power, then perhaps there will be less violence in Mexico?

[bdavisx]

According to this: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-157.html, repealing alcohol prohibition "dramatically reduced crime, including organized crime, and corruption". While organized crime and "the mob" obviously still existed afterwards, they lost a lot.

[api]

That's what makes prohibition so ugly. It's like YCombinator for psychopaths.

Combine that with the psychological acclimatization that it offers and it gets even uglier. It creates this on-boarding process for hell. Dealing drugs really isn't wrong in most cases -- it's a voluntary activity. It only gets morally questionable when you start "pushing" and doing so with addictive substances. But it is illegal, and doing it lands you in a world of people who flout the law and commit other crimes as well. Once you're in that world you're apt to pick up a taste for other kinds of illegal activity that really does involve hurting people, especially if you are at all psychologically prone to amoral behavior. In some cases this can take people all the way to unspeakable evils like trafficking children for sex slavery or contract murder.

Prohibition is an unambiguous social evil. Anyone who still argues for it is either corrupt, ignorant, delusional, or simply hasn't thought about it very much.

[gohrt]

> Prohibition is an unambiguous social evil.

So, drugs should be legal, but "pushing and doing so with addictive substances" should be... also legal?

[jacquesm]

> I hear the human trafficking business is quite lucrative and booming these days down their way.

You may be on to something there. How about removing restrictions on immigration at the same time? That should definitely knock the wind out of them.

[ufmace]

The fight against the cartels seems to be more like a war than conventional police work. One of the main themes of any war is logistics. Anything you can do to disrupt the enemy's logistics is pretty much always good, even if it isn't a perfect solution. You rarely get to completely destroy the enemy at a stroke, but instead you have to keep chopping off bits until they are defeated and discredited.

Yeah, legalizing drugs won't make them vanish overnight, but it will remove a hugely profitable revenue source from their arsenal, and that's always worth doing.

[pessimizer]

We should keep tightening up immigration, too. Send 'em back where they came from!

edit: So nobody sees an association between human trafficking and tightening of immigration policy? Good to know.

[luckyno13]

Sure, if you are talking about smuggling illegal immigrants INTO the country. But immigration would have nothing to do with the kidnapped individuals that are being taken OUT of the US to be used in the sex, labor and (in this case) engineering trades.