The vast majority of smuggled drugs come in through border checkpoints, hidden in shipments of ordinary goods that are part of the legitimate US/Mexico trade.

That kind of supports my point. Crappy border enforcement.

There are millions of tons of goods entering the United States every year. How exactly would you intend to enforce this perfectly?

That's like saying that websites shouldn't have copyright violations on them, since every single piece of content uploaded to them can be manually reviewed and approved to prevent violations. Good luck with that.

The drug trade is due to consumer demand for drugs. The violence is due to government prohibition driving it underground. Underground markets tend to elevate the worst, most ruthless and violent actors. Legalizing and regulating recreational drugs will likely put violent drug cartels out of business or force them into legal, nonviolent traditional roles.

That's like saying theft is increasing because of consumer demand for free goods. And that all goods should be free to reduce demand.

The reasonble choice is to make the trade more difficult and raise prices. Cigarette prices have shown demand for some very addictive substances are far more elastic than some would believe.

I think there's better solutions than increasing exposure to addictive drugs. Non-addictive stuff I really don't care about. But they don't drive the drug trade either. I'm also for decriminalizing addiction to encourage people to seek help. Your suggestion is a bit too much anarchy for me

No, it’s due to the existence of high demand.

There will always be a way to get it into the country if there is a paying market.

Prices will increase, lowering demand. It will always get in as long as someone is willing to pay the price. But if the price is steep enough, it will be greatly curtailed. The drug market operates on supply and demand like other commodities

This is the exact same "War on Drugs" logic that's been failing us for decades now. Time to try out solutions based on a better theory, like legalization.

The problem there is "impervious border". It's impossible.

And even with a perfect wall in place, we still let people through it and over it and around it via other channels. The problem isn't really just people physically walking across the border away from checkpoints.