At a certain point, we have to give up the absurd fantasy that we can stop people from using drugs we don't like. We've had several generations to try, and plenty of money and liberty-bending laws to help in the goal, and what has that effort gotten us? Drugs have gotten cheaper, criminal enterprises have gotten stronger, our civil liberties have been degraded and we left ourselves wide open to the fentanyl epidemic.
Plus, we're stuck paying out the ass for all the prisons we've filled up.
Organized crime has a hold in Mexico for many reasons, a critical one being that wages and purchasing power are so low there which foster corruption and reduce state power.
The discussion of whether the legalization of some drugs are good for our society should be had independently of whatever the cartels are doing.
So yes, even with all drugs legal, there will still be organized crime for prostitution and weapon smuggling, etc. but the crime organisations won't have bigger budgets then the police and army anymore
From Wikipedia:
"The Organization of American States estimated that the revenue for cocaine sales in the U.S. was $34 billion in 2013. "
So in brief, your argument about the drug trade and the continuing illegality of drugs not being directly relevant to the cartels and their activity is wrong.
I've been living down here for nearly two decades by the way and watching these things, so just a bit of contextual knowledge of how the situation works.
I see a future where either militaries or vigilante citizens release swarms of drones with facial recognition that either seek out the faces of gang members or the visible markers that they wear like face tattoos or biker patches.
Organized crime won't go away totally but they won't be able to operate openly with such impunity.
So it was not the drug cartels, but anti-cartel militas suspecting the inspectors to be connected to the cartels? Or what was their motivation? Just protecting their local turf/state?
Did they know they were US avocado inspectors?
This sums it up.. it always comes down to ‘California’s Water War.’
CA Ag is devastating. There is so much more to this story.
[..]Today, groundwater in Michoacán is disappearing and its bodies of water are drying up. Lake Zirahuén is polluted by agricultural runoff. Nearly 85% of the country was experiencing a drought in 2021, and experts project that the state’s Lake Cuitzeo, the second largest in all of Mexico, could disappear within a decade. In part because of the conversion from pine to avocado trees, the rainy season has shrunk from around six months to three. So profound is the drain on the region’s aquifers that small earthquakes have newly become commonplace. The 100-mile avocado corridor has, in effect, become the only live theatre of what is often referred to as “California’s water wars”.
It’s unclear whether the avocado can survive this changing climate. But in Michoacán, the more pressing question is whether its residents can survive the avocado.[..]
But maybe it is a connected case, of an area where there are Avocados, but local militias want to get rid of them.
Even the apparatus of the state in Mexico could stand in their way, or crush them, but due to a complex multitude of factors, it doesn't and appears weaker than they are though it's in fact stronger and in a certain way the senior partner in the tacit arrangements cartels and formal authorities create.
