[toufiqbarhamov]

Except now the cartels have expanded into smuggling people (and the attendant unsavory side businesses), and may make more money from that than drugs. It may seem unnecessary, but there's a lot of real human suffering directly arising from cartel activities. I certainly think there are better approaches to stopping them than what we've been doing for the last 30 years though.

Untangling the “war on drugs” from the issue of human trafficking and other ills has to be desirable for everyone involved except the cartels. If you want a war on human trafficking, I don’t think you’d get much pushback, but let’s stop conflating that with drugs. Remember that almost 2/3rds of the drugs coming through is pot, which is a ridiculous thing even just from a trade-balance perspective.

At any rate, if smuggling drugs becomes unprofitable, cartels will still be forced to massively downsize. That will impact their whole operational space, human trafficking included.