The cartels only exist because the illegality of those drugs creates massive profit margins. Remove that and many of the problems are solved.
"Poppy cultivation had become an agribusiness and the dealers for the Afghan drug barons now had technical advisers who were visiting Nangarhar to advise on the crop and the product, paying in advance, and so concerned about the health of their workers that they had given them face-masks to wear in the opium factories. Some said they even offered health insurance. This was capitalism on a ruthlessly illegal scale. And when I asked a European UN official how the world could compete with it, he drew in his breath. "Legalise drugs!" he roared. "Legalise the lot. It will be the end of the drug barons. They'll go broke and kill each other. But of course the world will never accept that. So we'll go on fighting a losing war."
-- The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East by Robert Fisk
There is a somewhat widespread belief (and certainly corroborated by the history textbooks I had growing up) that the opium trade into China was politically motivated, as opposed to merely that of financial greed. There are persistent claims, even now, that the British encouraged the use of opium in an attempt to destabilize and make weak the Chinese Empire for the express purpose of then making war. The opium trade, and the subsequent war, continues to be a historical black mark that fuels Eastern distrust of the West.
Without blaming anyone even, the Chinese widely acknowledge that opium was one of the primary causes of the decline of the Empire (along with the common blame of governmental excess). This has fostered an extremely skeptical and negative attitude towards narcotics that has lasted to the present day. At least on paper, drug offenses in Taiwan are still punishable by death - though it's not applied as rigorously as before.
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/response/what-we-hav...
A whole lot of words and nothing being said. I shouldn't say nothing, the message 'we're humoring you all with these petitions, they don't actually mean anything,' is pretty strong.
Apologies for the segue from Anon operations, but reading this excerpt made me remember just how annoying the situation is and I immediately thought of the petition.
It's crazy that we fight a war in Afghanistan where the enemy is largely financed by two of our addictions (oil via Saudi contributions to AQ, and opiates via the Taliban), and our own logistical footprint (10% of the logistics budget of the US presence goes indirectly to the Taliban!).
The war on drugs, in addition to being ineffective, is racist and immoral.
However, even though drugs is how they started, there are criminal/terrorist organizations, like MS13 and Los Zetas, which are a threat to the stability of some fairly weak states, a source of violence in US and foreign communities, etc., which need to be destroyed even after drug funding is cut off.
The relevancy of all of this to Hacker News is becoming really strained, though.