The war on drugs is not winnable, but the cartels can be defeated by legalizing all drugs.
Maybe there’s a Paretto distribution at play here
a. Easy access to drugs.
b. Cartels.
As terrible as cartels are, easy access to drugs is easily a much bigger problem.
Edit: I'm using an admittedly simplistic heuristic: How many people are going to have their lives destroyed by a. compared to b.?
Also no one has their life ruined by cartels in the US - somehow they all turn entrepreneurial once they cross the borders
Edit. The world is imperfect, and it will always be imperfect. There is no solution, and especially no government policy, that can possibly make everyone's lives perfect. Maybe, asymptotically, an individual aspiration to sainthood / life well lived / nirvana / etc.
In the social media era we have lost the concept of tradeoffs, of minimizing harm. We are compelled to attempt to completely eliminate harm, which is impossible.
I’d rather limit the existence of roving bands of murderous thugs funded by their monopoly on illegal drugs
Again, not a reality in the US fortunately - but even with the century old drug war the drugs keep coming in. Readily available to our kids at school. So, we’ve tried that
But the devastating consequences of cartel proliferation get externalized to LatAm