I think the idea that most law enforcement agencies try to paint everyone that they are taking action against as the "bad guys" is a dangerous road. This is how you end up using SWAT teams to serve warrants to unpaid parking tickets. It attempts to make the law some sort of "good vs. bad" moral struggle. I'm sure that there are many laws in other countries (e.g. Saudi Arabia) that we would disagree make someone "bad" for breaking them.

That said, painting the Mexican cartels as some sort of group of "freedom fighters" trying to bring drugs to the impoverished, oppressed masses is hopelessly naive.

It's not all black/white good guy vs. bad guy stuff.

This thing is so big, it creates problems of its own.

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/americas-dirtie...

It's pretty much proven we can't control the flow of drugs. The cost of attempting to do so is too high. We should just stop.

it's common knowledge that legalizing drugs would destroy incomes for gangs, who as we all know are the root of violent crimes. If the gangs don't exist, the violence drops.

Wow - that's quite a leap.

Legalize drugs, then the Cartels just say, "Oh, you guys legalized all the drugs were smuggling into your country? I guess we better quit our gang get day jobs now."

Just like we saw when marijuana was legalized here, the cartels simply diversified and started smuggling more heroin, coke and meth and less marijuana. Did their violence subside? Nope. Did it really have a huge impact on their business? Hardly.

So wait, were the cartels sitting around ignoring heroin/coke/meth as long as marijuana was illegal? That makes no sense.

Not every cartel will go out of business immediately, but if you cut off a big source of illegal funds it absolutely will mean less illegal activity.

They weren't, but like all big corporations, they diversified their product lines:

- Losing marijuana business, Mexican cartels push heroin and meth -https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/losing-mar...

- Marijuana Legalization Sparks Heroin, Meth Trade Increase with Mexican Cartels - https://www.thefix.com/content/marijuana-legalization-sparks...

- Drug Cartels Turning to Meth, Heroin After Pot Legalization in U.S. - http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/05/19/drug-cartels-turning-m...

- Have Changing Marijuana Laws Led to an Increase in Heroin & Meth Smuggling? - http://lighthouserecoveryinstitute.com/have-changing-marijua...

Also, marijuana was never much money for the cartels, the real money has always been in heroin and meth. It's much cheaper to produce and the profit margins are much better than weed.

If you want to cut off their biggest sources of illegal activity, you're not only going to have to legalize some pretty serious drugs, you're also going to have to legalize kidnapping, murder, blackmail and racketeering. The idea that the only way cartels make money is on drugs is terribly myopic.

I'm not saying we should legalise all profitable things. But when the profit:social harm ratio is large, making them illegal may do more harm than good. Every extra product line helps the cartels - if it wasn't profitable they wouldn't be doing it. Kidnapping and racketeering are expensive and dangerous; drugs are not their only source of income but they are a big one.

It's the same logical leap as legalizing alcohol during the prohibition era reduced violence [1]. See Figure 4 - Homicide Rate (1910 - 1944).

[1]: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-157.html

The idea is to legalize and control all drugs. Where will the cartels get their money from?

Some drugs are still going to be cheaper from the illegal market. Criminal gangs don't pay tax; sometimes use slave labour; don't have the best quality control; etc.

See also the amount of counterfeit and smuggled cigarettes in the UK.

True but the effect is likely to be fairly small. It's probably better to compare legalization of most drugs to the end of prohibition. That saw a collapse in crime and incarceration rates back towards (although admittedly not all the way down to) pre-prohibition levels which only picked up again with the war on drugs.

If you don't trust that comparison, how about looking at the actual real world effects seen recently in Western countries such as Holland and Portugal that have tried this.

Yes, but it's still a problem.

UK customs agents seize about 1m cigarettes per day. There are about 10m smokers in the UK, so if they smoke about 20 a day that's about 200m cigarettes per day. 1m isn't much compared to that. But it's still there.

(But I do strongly support legalisation of drugs. I just think there's some stuff to be learnt from UK)

The black market is a natural limit on the "effectiveness" of sales taxes. High enough taxes constitute de facto prohibition, especially for poorer segments of the market. Thus a high enough tax can't really be justified by the goals of collecting funds or discouraging vice. The criminal activity is the point; how else could they justify employing so many more police than a rational system of laws would require?