Fuck that. Fuck us. I hope this is a prison planet.

I wonder why he doesn’t?

Legalising pot would have a impact, not through denying revenue to the cartels but rather by giving a legal source of revenue to farmers thus weakening cartel control of rural areas.
Coke – I don’t see this being legalised. 80% of US coke imports come through Mexico.
Meth – I don’t see this being legalised either. Production shifted south of the boarder as regulation in the US make it more difficult to acquire the ingredients there.

So legalisation is, at best, only a partial solution.

Additionally, people need to accept that local consumption in Mexico is also driving much of the violence. Yes Mexico boarders the world largest drug market, and states which have liberal gun laws. However why does El Paso have a tiny murder rate and Juarez the worst in the world? There are a number of possible answers:
The fight in Juarez is over control of retail distribution
Splintering cartels by capturing leaders causes new turf wars
It’s a deliberate strategy (terror in the south in order to act with impunity and low profile in the north) 

Possibly all of the above, but these are questions that need to be teased out and understood before a solution is obvious.

(and as an aside can we take down the photo, it serves no purpose and there is enough of that crap on Blog Del Narco for people who have a taste for such things and also can we keep the “failed state” and “I don’t understand just shoot em al” rhetoric to a minimum please).

“Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the USA”

while legalization is certainly not a bad idea, it won’t solve this problem.  These aren’t wayward boy scouts who will, on losing this source of revenue, immediately take up responsible places in society.  They’ll simply turn their resources to finding another easy way to make a lot of money, be it extortion, kidnapping, gun-running etc.

cinerik… let’s look at facts and history instead of your wayward conjecture.  Look at what happened to the mafia after alcohol prohibition ended in the USA.  Factions of the mafia disappeared altogether.  Ending drug prohibition can and will solve the problem overall.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122843683581681375.html

This will not end well for them.

But no, under the current guidelines for deploying our already overstretched military might, I foresee no invasion into Mexico.

Bunk, plain and simple. I believe this was once a Republican Talking Point on the matter, or at least I’ve seen it pop up on talk shows a lot. Are you seriously suggesting that these cartels are aware of numerous easy ways to make lots of money and aren’t exploiting them? That these opportunities are just sitting there, ripe and juicy, until such time as the drug cartel leaders get around to bothering with them?

Nonsense. Legalization would cut off a huge source of income to the cartels, reducing their power enormously. While they may take refuge in less profitable endeavors, with less money they simply can’t operate the way they are now.

What you’re saying is “Sure, if Microsoft can’t sell Windows, they’d lose one source of income. But they do have Office for the Mac and some other product lines, and they could always just turn their resources to something else easy. They’d keep making a fortune.” Would they go out of business? Probably not. Would there be massive layoffs, a stock nosedive, and huge revenue losses? Yeah. Would they spend the same amount on lobbying and marketing? I doubt it. So it will go with the cartels.

It should GREATLY reduce crime at the street level. Current gang members have the money and power from drug. People give their lives for the gang in the hopes they are the on in 1000 who actually make real money at it. Take that away and you will have some traditional crime still, but shaking down people for protection money isn’t as easy or lucrative.

One only has to look at prohibition to see how quickly violence dropped off once alcohol was legal again. Part of the cartel would go legit – making and selling drugs. Why wouldn’t they? “Oh noes – its legal! Oh wells – burn all the cocoa plants and the last person out needs to turn off the lights.”

As someone said already in this thread, there is a conspicuous shortage of whiskey-related violence these days.

One of my favorite “you’re fucking kidding, right?” moments was at the DMV. They would not take my Social Seciurty card because it was laminated. “Its harder to tell if it is counterfeit or not.” I believe was their explanation. Do you know what they did accept? A pay stub  with my SS on it. When it was over I held up the pay stub and my SS card, “One of these would take time and skill to counterfeit. The other one any idiot can go to Office Max, buy blank checks, and make 100  copies saying anything they want!”

I’m pretty sure it says right on my SS card: “do not laminate.”  Mine is fairly recent, so it might not say so on yours.  Still, I’m not sure it’s exactly a “you’re fucking kidding” situation when someone points out to you that part of the anti-counterfeiting measures incorporated into SS cards is the kind of paper used and potentially watermarky stuff that’s hard to read with lamination.Also, have you considered the notion that they considered the combination of laminated SS card and pay stub with SS number to be sufficient as opposed to the pay stub itself?  I run into lots of situations using a NH license in MA where people want to see another form of ID and they’re almost always content with a non-photo ID with my name on it.  I’ve always assumed that the combination was what satisfied them rather than the non-photo ID itself.  I’m sure the woman was charmed, though.