As I alluded to in my response, this is complex. I am by no means qualified to come up with a so called "legitimate alternative", but I suspect you are poking at me because I critiqued an idea and offered none of my own. Based on my knowledge, one big step toward removing the incentive for the cartels to operate in Mexico would be to remove the demand for drugs in the U.S. For a long time weed supplied to the U.S. has been the biggest source of income for the cartels. If you remove the need for weed grown somewhere else then that would seem to at least somewhat reduce the demand. We have plenty places to grow it here, we should do that, and then tax the hell out of it, and use the money for something good. That has obviously already begun, and may work for weed, but i'm not advocating for the legalization of heroin, meth, or cocaine, which the cartels also supply to the U.S., so I guess get people to stop using those? I'm not really sure how you do that. Americans do what they want and the war on drugs has succeeded in nothing but filling up prisons.
Legalize everything and let God sort it out?
What's your solution?
Due to the way weed has been legalized, there is still a healthy incentive to operate illicitly:
- One year of legal pot sales and California doesn't have the bustling industry it expected. Here's why
- How Legal Weed Is Killing America's Most Famous Marijuana Farmers
- Legalizing marijuana was supposed to slow illegal activity in California. It hasn't
That being said, weed isn't the cartel cash crop anymore. (https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2018-11/DIR-032-18 2018 NDTA final low resolution.pdf)
Don't get me wrong, they still ship a staggering amount of weed (they're the number 1 supplier to the US of foreign grown).
But they also produce heroin, methamphetamine, fentanyl, and transport cocaine.
It is not clear from the data that legalizing the production and sale of marijuana has had any significant disruption to illicit operations. It cannot, therefor, be concluded that legalizing the harder drugs would have any impact to the cartel's operations.
Screwing around with who the supplier is of a product has little effect on the pent up demand for said product. These are addictive drugs, not crayons. They behave much more like inelastic goods. Remember when gas prices were spiking around 2008? This spike had virtually no effect on demand. Drugs behave similarly. Change the price, change the supplier...the demand will not simply go down because of these things and may actually cause a new market to open up, that a cartel could then take advantage of, like a new designer drug.
I think that the only way that we can curb demand is to help break the vicious cycle of addiction. Most people addicted to substances remain functioning because they need to - either to support themselves and/or a family. Can they simply take 30 to 90 days away from their jobs to go to rehab? Hardly. So we reserve rehab for only the wealthy or the broken and expect the working poor to simply carry on or figure it out themselves.
Add to that the fact that being caught with any of these substances means a felony conviction, loss of current and any future possibility of being "gainfully employed," loss of rights like the right to a firearm or the right to vote...and you can see why people would struggle to find and get help.
I don't believe in most government handouts - but where addiction is concerned, we should help those trying to help themselves. A person should be allowed to go to rehab and know that their job is safe, same as if they went out on maternal/paternal leave. Non-violent drug offenses should be expunged after a time of probation. That'd be a start, anyway.
If by "asserting ourselves" into Mexico you mean sending tens of thousands of troops, then yes that is what it would take, a full invasion of a sovereign nation. I think this would look something like the war in Afghanistan. How would you tell members of the drug cartels from innocent Mexican citizens? Not sure you really thought this one through. While in theory, a safer Mexico, free of drug cartels would make a lot of people feel better, this is not an easy task. Wiping out the cartels via maximum force also does nothing to deal with the reasons why the cartels are there to begin with. Finally, while we have our focus on this next "endless war" China, already our biggest threat, continues to hum along and become and even bigger problem for us to deal with in the future, a problem that will make the cartels look like a band of angry shop lifters.
The difference between the cartels and the Middle East is that the cartels are not fighting for their homes or ideology; they're fighting for their lucrative lifestyle and because of fear...fear that if they don't fight, they or their family may end up on the wrong side of the cartel.
We know where their facilities are, to some degree, and without crops or manufacturing, their business is dead. Do you think that the remaining cartel will huddle around the crispy fields, the roofless buildings, and stand their ground and fight? No, once those things are gone they'll be trying to rebuild in secret. And every time we stomp out their operation, they get a little smaller...until they're no bigger than current crop of rednecks in the South making meth.
We can crush the cartel infrastructure and leadership through air superiority alone. However, in order to make amends with Mexico, we would need to help the country repair and build up, not unlike our involvement in Japan post WW2. But for this to occur, we need either the Mexican government or people to partner with us. And for that to occur...well, I don't know how we could cause that mindset to change.