There is only one solution to this. Legalize the drugs. The Mexican drug cartels simply exist due to the lack of availability of legal drugs on the American side of the border. Capturing Joaquin Guzman and putting him behind the bars for the rest of his life will not make much of a difference. He will be quickly replaced by someone else.
Very true. Back in October 2014 when the government changed the laws regarding hydrocodone, word on the street here in Houston was the cartels had massive amounts of heroin just waiting to flood the streets as soon as the laws went into effect on October 6th - Houston was/is a major hub full of pill mills, much like Tampa with their oxy clinics and sure enough, when the laws went into effect, many of those users switched to heroin as it was not only cheaper, but now more accessible. The thing with this is, a good portion of those users aren't what you'd picture as the average addict and what was already a huge problem here is now even bigger and much more deadly. The cartels aren't going anywhere as long as there is such a huge market for them up north, the amount of money being made by the cartels is staggering.
There is a better solution than legalizing drugs.
People forget that they want freedom. But if they remember, they don't think it through.
What if it wasn't drugs. What if it was your hair comb in your pocket. What if government regulated your hair comb. If your hair comb isn't regulated in your area, what can you do with it? Anything you want, right? As long as you are not hurting someone else with it, you can do anything you want, right?
If government made some kind of law that said it was okay to have a hair comb in your pocket, haven't they regulated it? No! They have regulated you. If you want freedom, you don't want regulation. You might want information, like how keeping a hair comb outside of your pocket for more than 5 minutes at a time, is dangerous for you and other people. But you don't want to be told what to do... that you are required by law to do it.
Get government out of legalization.
But first,
get them out of illegalization. Get them out of regulation of your personal property, because the truth is, when they regulate stuff, they are really regulating their property. And their property that they are regulating is
YOU, not some comb, and not some drugs.
If you need government regulation in your life, because you are so wimpy that you can't determine when someone has hurt you, let them regulate only the people who harm other people. This way you can be free. But if you don't like freedom, at least get government out of other peoples' lives so that
they can be free.
Don't legalize drugs, but don't illegalize them either. Repeal all the laws against drug use, and leave people alone to run their own lives. But punish them when they hurt other people.