[jacquesm]

Mexico is less of a problem to the United States than the other way around. With the US drug habit and guns and funds export Mexico is helpless to do much of anything about this. This would hold for any country where the illegal economy is larger than the legal one.

Legalizing the drugs would rob the cartels of a vast chunk of their income and that in turn would allow the Mexican government to finally do something about them that will not be a country-sized game of whack-a-mole.